


Boomerangs and Rainbows

by mindbending



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Canonical Child Abuse, Character Turned Into a Ghost, Fake Marriage, Ghosts, Hopeful Ending, Humor, Imprisonment, M/M, Marriage of Convenience, Mental Health Issues, Panic Attacks, Puns & Word Play, Slow Burn, Torture, Zuko Joins The Gaang Early (Avatar), more like major character undeath and marriage of inconvenience
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-12-21
Updated: 2021-03-03
Packaged: 2021-03-11 00:40:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 6
Words: 31,611
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28206249
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mindbending/pseuds/mindbending
Summary: At Sokka’s behest, the Gaang skips rescuing Zuko during the Siege at the North Pole. Instead they leave him, unconscious, buried in the snow.In completely unrelated news, Sokka’s haunted by a ghost now.
Relationships: Ozai & Zuko (Avatar), Sokka/Zuko (Avatar), The Gaang & Zuko (Avatar), brief Sokka/Suki (Avatar), past Sokka/Yue (Avatar) - Relationship
Comments: 627
Kudos: 1407
Collections: A:tla, best of avatar, zukka that makes me go uwu, zuko best boi





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> In addition to the dark elements mentioned in the tags, this story includes:
> 
> \- a "surprise kiss" in Chapter 1 with the associated consent issues  
> \- a largely non-graphic description of meat-related farming practices that may be unpleasant  
> \- discussions of death, war, and ethics  
> \- cactus juice  
> \- a brief mention of a captive being forcibly drugged  
> \- a brief mention of a side character using firebending to cauterize their own wound
> 
> In this chapter, Sokka smacks Fong with Boomerang instead of his sword because it amuses me.
> 
> Inspired by [my tears ricochet](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CsiVvkzCdSI) by Taylor Swift.

“Hey, this is some quality rope!”

Having made his declaration, Sokka resumes inspecting said rope, its sadly cut coils now draped across his palm. They’re double-braided, strong and firm yet pleasantly smooth to the touch, with a little reddish tint that speaks to their dreadful Fire Nation origins but does make them nicer to look at it. Most remarkably, the coils have remained totally dry, despite hours of exposure to the polar elements and whatever ice water Zuko hauled them through-

Okay, so maybe Sokka’s got bigger things to think about than some very pretty rope. Things like the pitched siege thundering around them, as the full might of the Fire Nation Navy focuses on the Northern Water Tribe. Like Aang, newly rescued from the rope Zuko bound him with. Aang’s panicking because the _spirits_ are in trouble and need _their_ help, an absurdity that chills Sokka worse than the polar night.

Sokka clenches the rope in his fist and clambers onto Appa, besides Yue, off to rescue the spirits from what’s no doubt another dastardly Fire Nation plot. In front of him, Aang hops up to take the reins…

“Wait,” Aang says, slumping forward. “We can’t just leave him here.”

He looks to Zuko. Zuko’s half-buried in ice, right where Katara dumped him after destroying his latest devious attempt at abduction.

“Sure, we can,” Sokka says breezily. Zuko’s safely unconscious for now, but soon enough he’ll burn his way out. It’s a law of the universe, like the sun coming up every morning- he’ll be up and back at his “quest for honor,” as persistent and desperate as an otter penguin yapping for fish. “I bet you he’s working with whoever’s hunting the spirits. We bring him back to the oasis right now? It won’t be pretty.”

Aang takes a weird, longing look at Zuko. “Okay, we’ll come back for him. Yip-yip!”

/

The moon goes dark.

Sokka abandons the rope. Abandons all thoughts besides _we’re doomed_ and _Yue’s gone._

Somehow the moon rises once more. 

(After the battle Aang returns to where they’d left Zuko, only to find a blanket of flat, unbroken snow. Zuko’s obviously escaped to torment them another day, but Sokka can’t bring himself to care right now.)

When the sun rises, the moon must fall once more. Sokka feels a phantom hand brushing his neck as the sunbeams creep forward.

It’s surely her farewell.

/

Except it isn’t.

He smiles again, when he climbs onto his hammock and feels a quick tickling touch in his sleep, so light he might’ve imagined it. When he wakes he gets a flick to his chin that makes him frown, because it stings a little. Maybe there’s a learning curve to becoming the moon spirit.

Hypothesis 1: Yue’s presence is still lingering, blessing him with touches from the other side.

It’s sunny though, and the moon’s nowhere in sight. So Sokka’s rational side points out, regretfully, that it might not be Yue at all.

Hypothesis 2: Sokka’s imagining all this, because he’s suffering from post-battle nerves and/or badly-managed grief.

He stays twitchy all the way to their rendezvous with General Fong of the Earth Kingdom, constantly looking over his shoulder, throwing suspicious glares at Momo whenever he comes within poking distance. But besides one awful buzzing on his cheek- which turns out to be an ordinary milli-fly, newly smeared across said cheek- he doesn’t sense anything else unusual. Once he’s safe in Fong’s garrison, the adrenaline from the North Pole slowly subsides. The twitchiness fades with it. Hypothesis 2 is validated; this is nothing a good night of sleep won’t cure.

(He feels a vague tug on his ankles that night, when he tries to convince Aang to let Fong have his way and insta-kill the Fire Lord with some sweet Avatar State action. Sokka dismisses it as a trick of his imagination. An outlier that should not be counted.)

/

General Fong works through a list of hypotheses of his own, trying to forcibly drag Aang into the Avatar State. He tries hooking Aang on chi-enhancing tea, but it seems to have no effect besides doubling his usual hyperness. A later strategy involves an Earth Kingdom sage, who dresses Aang in ceremonial clothing from all four nations and then proceeds to combine the four elements together in a bowl. Water. Earth. Fire...

The sage takes a lit torch from off the wall and brings it closer to them all, intending to drop it into his bowl of mud, but the fire _jumps._ The flame leaps from the wick and arcs forward, stretching its fire-y tendrils straight towards Aang-

Who blows it out with one tremendous gust.

General Fong claps his hands in interest. “Have you already studied firebending?”

“Barely.” Aang shakes his head. “I didn’t do that. Not on purpose, at least.”

“Then it’s a sign of your subconscious skills,” the general boasts. “This must be a step on the path to the Avatar State. Bring forth another torch; come now, Avatar, show us your power!”

The sage presents a new torch. Aang huffs and puffs and mimics random firebending poses he probably stole off Zuko- the angles look wrong, but who’s Sokka to judge- and the flame does nothing. It flickers irregularly, looking perfectly, _spitefully_ ordinary, until Aang airbends too hard and blows it right out.

/

The moon’s waning tonight. Sokka sleeps like a log, completely free from phantom touches or any other pesky supernatural-ish phenomena.

Case closed.

/

Fong turns out to be more than a little nuts, because apparently traveling with the Avatar means you can never have nice things. Sokka whacks Fong on the head with Boomerang, and then they pile onto Appa once more. Just him, Katara, and Aang, on their way to Omashu.

(Sokka jumps, feeling a finger-like poke to the small of his back. But when he turns, he only finds Momo sitting behind him, staring up with thoroughly suspicious widened eyes.)

_“Secret tunnel! Secret tunnel! Through the mountains, secret, secret, secret, secret tunnel!”_

They escape Fong and run right into the clutches of a troupe of non-air nomads, starring an off-key musician, Chong, who may or may not have short-term amnesia. One of the nomads gushes about a waterfall that makes a never-ending rainbow. Slightly more usefully, Chong claims there’s a secret passage to Omashu, right through the mountains. 

After the non-secret route gets them nearly killed by Fire Nation cannonballs, Sokka begrudgingly follows the nomads into the passage. It’s just an underground tunnel, carved in earthbending territory. Nothing sketchy or unusual about that...

“Actually, it's not just one tunnel,” Chong says, “The lovers didn't want anyone to find out about their love, so they built a whole labyrinth.”

“Labyrinth?” Sokka snaps.

“All you need to do is trust in love,” one of the other nomads reassures him. “According to the curse.”

 _“Curse?”_ Sokka squawks. Nobody else seems to listen. Nobody _ever_ listens to him.

According to this alleged curse, only those who “trust in love” can escape the caves. That is vague, vague phrasing, and for a second Sokka’d rather take his chances with the Fire Nation cannonballs again. Then Aang- master of balance and love and icky crushes on Sokka’s baby sister- overrules him, and then the Fire Nation closes in and pins them inside the cursed labyrinth, in with a bunch of giant draconic statues that look like they’re _watching._

Not creepy in the slightest.

The Fire Nation’s blown up the entrance, trapping them all inside the gloomy darkness, and Sokka’s trusting in love less every second. Still, he doesn’t lose his cool. He is an unshakable expert explorer after all, and so he treats this as any rational man trapped in a possibly cursed labyrinth would. He takes stock of their supplies- five torches, capable of lasting two hours each. Then, he grabs a pen and some paper, and he starts drawing a map. 

It’d be a foolproof plan, if the walls would just hold still for a minute.

“Sokka,” Katara complains one torch later, “this is the tenth dead-end you’ve led us to!”

He glares at the path in front of them, blocked off by a deluge of rocks. Then he glares at his map. “This doesn’t make sense, we’ve already been through this way!”

“We don’t need a map,” says Chong in singsong. “We just need love!”

Sokka keeps pacing around, totally ignoring him. Then something brushes the nape of his neck, and he drops his map with a squeak. Surprised, everyone turns to him.

“There was something behind me,” he protests.

“No?” Aang shrugs. “At least I didn’t see anything, sorry.”

“Me neither,” says Katara, frowning in concern. “Maybe you’re just jumpy. Would you feel better if you had a torch?”

Sokka resents that remark. He is a battle-tested warrior. He doesn’t need to personally carry a torch, even if creeping around a cursed and scientifically infuriating tunnel system gives him the heebie-jeebies.

“...Yeah, I’d like that.” Once he’s taken the torch from Chong, he rolls up his map and announces the conclusion of his extensive scientific inquiry. “There’s only one reason why the map wouldn’t get us out- the tunnels must be changing.”

That sparks a minor panic in their merry band.

“I knew we shouldn’t have come down here,” Chong cries out.

“Right,” Sokka deadpans. “If only we’d listened to you.”

There’s a huff of air on his neck like a chuckle, but Sokka grips his torch a little tighter and steadfastly ignores it. 

“Everyone be quiet,” says Katara. “Listen!”

And now there’s a ghostly clamor wailing its way through the caves, and yeah, they really shouldn’t have come down here. Still, Sokka does his best to show no fear, standing tall with his torch, facing down the darkness.

Then a wolf-bat shoots out of the tunnel and dives right at him. At first Sokka ducks, but as it swoops around them all with its fangs bared, he lifts his torch and tries sweeping it through the air. He means just to scare it off. Yet the flame leaps from his torch like he’d _thrown it,_ more effective than he was expecting. The wolf-bat’s wing catches on fire. Its smoking mass corkscrews through the air, screeching and scaring everyone else to the side before spiraling down into Appa’s leg. Thank the spirits, his wool doesn’t catch fire, but he lows in pain and starts charging wildly into the cave walls. At first Sokka stays in one place, stunned as the tunnels start to collapse, but then there’s a painful _yank_ on his ponytail, tugging him backwards, just before a massive slab of stone falls right where he’d been standing.

He gets up, choking on the dust, one hand still clenched around the torch. Then he looks at the veritable wall of rocks separating him from everyone else, screeches just like the wolf-bat, and starts digging, limbs windmilling as he tries to burrow right through.

He burrows and he burrows, but it’s no use.

He’s alone.

Going by the soreness of his limbs, he dug for at least half an hour, yet the torch is still burning strong at close to its original length. Sokka contemplates that and then shrugs off the discrepancy- he must be over-estimating how long he worked. Blame it on leftover exhaustion from, well, everything.

He gets up and starts trudging forward. He thinks it’s forward. He keeps his map, tucking it under one arm, but frankly he’s got some doubts about that approach now. Logic may have failed. Still, intuition can get him out of this. Sokka’s instincts will kick in any second now.

So he keeps going forward, and left, and then backwards and then right and then backwards for a little while again, and bam, his instincts are on point (see, Katara?). There’s a big circular door made of stone, and clearly this is the exit. He’s saved!

It then occurs to him that it’s a big circular door made of stone, with no handle to speak of.

Frowning, he lifts his torch and examines it a little more closely. It’s not unlike that door at the Air Temple that opened to airbending, or the one that the Fire Sages opened with firebending. 

“The key is earthbending,” Sokka mutters to himself. It helps, sometimes, to talk through his plans out loud and pretend someone’s listening. It’s not weird. Not even a little.

He kneels down and inspects the door more closely. It’s got an intricate pattern on it, a circular border with grooves around the edge, but the sculpture looks older and simpler than the craftsmanship at the other temples.

“Maybe fake earthbending could work here,” he remarks.

He reaches out to touch the possibly cursed ancient sculpture. After a second, he gets up close and friendly with the border, sticking his hand right into one of the lines carved deep in the stone.

There’s something in there.

Sokka brings forth his torch, and the firelight reveals a rudimentary locking mechanism. If he can just find a key, a piece of rock to jam in, maybe he’ll be able to trick the door into opening. He steps back and scans the area.

There’s another creepy draconic statue watching him. When he takes a closer look, he realizes that no, those are badgermoles, creatively reimagined with weird head spikes.

Weird head spikes that look the same size as the grooves in the door.

Sokka weighs the pros and cons of desecrating an ancient statue of the patron animal of earthbending and decides, yeah, it’s worth it. He aims Boomerang, and a perfectly key-sized chunk of rock clatters down. He collects it from the floor and lugs it over to the door. 

Yep, he nailed the size- at least on one side of the fragment. The other edge is all rough and choppy from where it broke off from the statue, but hey, he’ll just leave that side up.

He fits the smooth side into one of the grooves and feels a neat click.

“Nice thinking,” he tells himself, because a little well-deserved preening never hurt anyone’s mental health. “So now we just need one, two, three...seven more of these.”

There are eight grooves, and at first it seems like he needs to just fit eight keys in at the same time. But that’s not right; the other temples’ locks required prodigious displays of bending. Yet any earthbending kid could chop off eight rocks and stick them in holes. Surely there’s some deeper trick at play.

Also, it had better not be right, because there are only five head-spikes still left on the statues.

He removes the rock and spins around, hoping for some more clues. Maybe there’s another statue to steal spikes from, hiding down the tunnel? Yet out of the corner of his eye he spots his torch’s flame blowing sideways, like there’s a breeze, even though Sokka hasn’t felt one.

“Am I dead?” he squawks to the labyrinth. “Did I die and become immune to wind? Because don’t get me wrong, that’d be super-helpful back home in the winter, but that’s still really not what I signed up for here?”

His torch’s flame calms down again, and Sokka laughs after a second. There’s a perfectly rational reason for the flame to jump around weirdly. The Mechanist put powders in his candles so they flickered on command and let out special noises. Obviously the nomads did something to their torches too- not with any clear purpose, just because they enjoy the chaos.

Still, for no particular reason, he takes a look in the direction the flame had pointed. There are pilasters framing the door, columns set into the wall, and there’s writing on the pedestal of one. “May all things be in order.”

Sokka checks out the other pedestal and finds the same message.

“Right,” he drawls. “The creepy labyrinth with the moving walls really cares about logic and order. I totally believe that.”

He drops down on the pedestal with a huff. Takes a look at the torch that’ll burn out in under two hours, though so far it still looks it’s new.

(Which is its own little mystery, but it’s one that benefits Sokka for a change. He’s not going to question it right now.)

“May all things be in order,” he murmurs to himself. Then he leaps up and takes another look at the eight grooves. “Maybe there’s a combination. I just have to get the order right.”

He squints, doing some quick mental math. There are 40,000 possible orderings of eight grooves, rounding down. It’s infeasible for any old layman to open the door, but maybe a skilled earthbender can feel the rock falling into place. It makes perfect sense. Too bad he’s as far as you can get from a skilled earthbender.

“So there’s probably a metal locking mechanism on the inside,” he muses, ignoring the way his voice echoes creepily. “So any old earthbender can’t make it in. Just the ones who sense the right order.”

He tries shoving his ear right up against the wall and sticking the block into a random groove. There’s a click, same as before. He tries the other seven, clambering up onto the door and balancing on the carved decoration like it’s a ledge. There’s seven other clicks. They all sound totally identical.

He hops down with a grunt of frustration. His torch is still burning merrily away.

He looks down the seemingly endless tunnels, and checks the map he’d made, covered with criss-crosses and parts he’d scratched out. He hasn’t got a better plan at the moment.

So he tries it again, moving the block around, listening as carefully as he can for a click that’s not like the others. On his fourth try, there’s a weird _tap_ against his knuckles, like the stone side of the groove had jumped up to touch him, even though it couldn’t possibly have. He’s not an earthbender.

Sokka stares at the groove and then decides to trust his instincts.

He starts drawing a new diagram on the back of his map. “So the rightmost one on the bottom goes first, which leaves seven choices for the next one.”

He tries all seven again, going clockwise. Nothing.

“What?” Sokka says. “Do I have to do it all in the right order?”

There’s no answer. Suddenly, Sokka really hopes the lock doesn’t want him to reuse grooves, because then there are infinitely many orderings and he’s _never getting out of here._

With a groan, he sticks the block in the first groove and then tries going counterclockwise. When he sticks the block in his next guess, he feels the click, and then the same weird rapping sensation.

“...Huh.”

He keeps going, first punching in the grooves he’s already figured out and then continuing onwards, trying new spots until there’s another convenient _tap._ Obviously he’s tuned into the system of tumblers within the lock, because it’s gotten creaky with age or because his instincts are just that awesome. Standing on tip-toes to reach the top of the door, he inserts the key and feels the click and a weirdly delayed tap.

Then the whole door rumbles, throwing him to the ground, and it slowly slides away, revealing-

Not the exit.

“Are you kidding me?” Sokka whines. He can totally indulge in kiddy theatrics, not like anyone’s around to hear him.

Then he steps inside this new cursed room that’s full of dust and dark as a tomb.

Oh.

It _is_ a tomb.

Sokka climbs down to the bottom of the hall. At the center are two sarcophagi, raised up on a giant stone circle- a pedestal, with carvings along the side. He kneels down to examine them, surely imagining the way his torch flares, illuminating them more clearly.

“So here we’ve got two lovers,” he mutters to himself. “They’re from two different villages, on opposite sides of a war. Totally normal. And they learn earthbending to meet each other, and...they made the cursed labyrinth together. Well, whatever turns you on. And then...oh.”

Out of nowhere, the guy dies. 

Sokka feels like that’s not how the story was supposed to go.

Then the girl loses it and shuts down the war with a massive earthbending intervention, and she creates a new city named Omashu, because her name was Oma and her lover’s was Shu. In Sokka’s opinion, shoving a couple’s names together isn’t a good way to name anything, but then again nobody asked.

“Great origin story,” Sokka says. “Now how the heck do I get out of here?”

He raises his torch, looking for further clues. He finds them in the form of two giant statues kissing each other, plus an inscription saying “love is brightest in the dark.” Sokka takes this in and then sinks to the ground, groaning.

He is willing to admit, after a thorough review of the evidence, that this place might have some magic going on. He’s gotten lost way too many times and hit too many dead ends to believe he’ll make it out without some kind of supernatural intervention. That means he needs to play whatever game Oma here set up, all those centuries ago.

(Would it have killed her to be a bit clearer on the rules?)

“Love is brightest in the dark,” he repeats to himself. “Could be a random platitude. Could be a hint, like the thing about order. Maybe I do have to ‘trust in love.’”

He waves his torch around, hoping to uncover more useful inscriptions. No such luck.

Maybe if it’s a magic labyrinth, it’s listening. Which is creepy as anything, but Sokka sighs and resigns himself to the fact that this is his life now.

“I love my family,” he offers. “I know I give Katara a hard time, but she’s kind and so smart and I really hope she gets out of here fine, even if...if I don’t.” He takes a deep breath in. “I miss Dad every day. I get that I was too young for the war when he left, but...I still wish I could’ve gone with him. I miss Mom, too. And I do love her, even if I can’t remember her right, not after the Fire Nation…”

He trails off. Beside him, his odd little torch seems to glow a little brighter. Then it gutters, shuddering the way Sokka does.

Firmly, he pulls his breath back under control. “I love Aang too. Not like that! I mean, guys are great and gorgeous, and he’s the Avatar, but he’s also twelve. And bald. Not that baldness strictly kicks a guy out of competition-“ he has the abrupt realization that Zuko could be in that particular competition, and that’s a cursed thought that he pushes right back where it came from- “but he’s into Katara anyway. I love Appa and Momo. I...loved Yue. I’d like to believe that somehow, she still knows that.” 

He gives it a few minutes before turning his head up to the kissing statues and hollering, “Is that what you wanted? You got my tragic backstory, can I get the way out?”

There’s no sound. No sign anyone or anything cares.

Sokka shoots to his feet, feeling suddenly alone and maybe a little hysterical. “Okay, maybe you want me to take this literally. Is that what you want? An actual kiss?”

He kneels down and plants his lips on a picture on the stone circle, the one where Oma and Shu were kissing. Who knows, maybe it’s the key to another weird earthbending lock. 

Nothing.

He wheels around and jumps onto the statues’ knees so he can reach the “love is brightest” inscription. He looks around for any locking mechanism there. Finding none, he kisses that too.

“Seriously?” he demands.

He puts his torch down- carefully hanging it off the edge of the stone pedestal and weighing it down with rocks, so it’ll stay put- and plants himself in front of the statues, hands on his hips. After a few seconds, he works out a route upwards. Then he lunges, scales the statues- and yikes, Oma probably doesn’t appreciate his grip right now- and he sticks his lips right on the spot where _their_ lips meet. He tries that a couple times, adjusting his angle for optimum...something.

At last, he shimmies back down and considers contemplating defeat.

“Nope,” he tells the dust bunnies. “I’ve got one more plan.”

He takes his torch back up and jumps onto the pedestal, going up to the sarcophagi. 

“So,” he says, approaching the nearest one, “I have no idea if you’re Oma or Shu, but I guess it’s a good thing that I’m cool either way?”

He holds his nose and brushes his lips on the box’s lid, just a little. Then he switches to the other one. Then he frantically rubs his mouth on the hem of his shirt, because there’s definitely a couple centuries’ worth of dust now caked on his mouth like the world’s worst lipstick.

Frowning when nothing happens, he circles them a couple times, inspecting them for hinges or latches or-

Cracks!

There’s a little dent at the rim of one of the sarcophagi. Not wide enough for his fingers to fit through, but Boomerang will slip in just fine.

He shrugs. “No big deal. It’s just a matter of leverage.”

Seizing a giant breath to prepare himself, he takes Boomerang out and slides it into the hole. If he jiggles it just right, he’ll be able to pop the lid off the box and _boom,_ he’ll be out of here-

The torch’s flame gets bigger, like it’s trying to catch his attention. He ignores it. Leans down on his makeshift lever and lifts the lid a couple inches…

It falls back into place with a thunderous crash. Then Sokka reels back, screeching.

He stumbles back into the wall because something just _whacked him on the mouth,_ and oh, spirits, it’s not letting go. A second later, he realizes that whatever’s attached itself to him feels almost like a mouth, even though by the time he lifts his hands there’s absolutely nothing there anymore, but he can’t double-check with his eyes because he dropped the torch at some point and it went out and _spirits, please, make it stop-_

There’s a light in the darkness. 

Sokka turns, suddenly freed, and sees glowing green light from the ceiling outside the door. Torch forgotten, he grabs Boomerang and runs, following the green crystals that seem to light up in the dark- and that makes so much sense, of course there was a sensible non-magical explanation for that “love is brightest in the dark” nonsense. Same goes for the weird blow to the mouth. He must have dropped the torch first and then gotten mauled by a freakish cavern creature. It fled again once the crystals started glowing, leaving him with blood on his teeth and a fat lip.

He didn’t offend any supernatural entities by disturbing the remains of the first earthbenders. How could he? He didn’t even finish opening the box.

He _definitely_ didn’t just kiss an angry ghost. Why would anyone even think that.

He runs into Aang and Katara on his way out.

“Spirits, Sokka, what happened to your mouth?” she exclaims.

“I won a fight with an extra-fast wolf-bat,” he declares. It’s the truth now. He’s sticking with it.

“We’ve been looking for you for hours,” says Aang. “We went through three of the torches!”

Sokka’s torch was still going strong at most half an hour ago. He chalks that up to the unreliability of all things Chong-related.

Once he makes it out to sunlight, he grins. “See? No curse. No weird, supernatural shenanigans anywhere.”


	2. Chapter 2

So Omashu’s decked out in red now.

“Ugh,” Sokka cries. “Does the Fire Nation have to latch onto  _ everything? _ Can’t one place stay free of tacky red drapery?”

Getting into Fire Nation territory means  _ sneaking _ into Fire Nation territory. Sokka gamely trudges uphill through a sewage pipe. He doesn’t complain even a little when he emerges above ground with a solid two pounds of grime and gook caked onto him. He stays obligingly quiet as Katara splashes him with a barrelful of water and Aang blasts him with a frankly concussive gust of air-

There’s still something stuck to him.

_ That’s _ when Sokka freaks.

He shrieks like a soprano in a finale as he pulls at the giant pink pustules newly clinging to his head, but they refuse to budge, sticking in place like they’re just  _ part of him now.  _ “Agh, they won’t let go, heeeeeelp-“

Aang tackles him into a wall and then gives him a totally benevolent smile. “Stop making so much noise, it’s just a purple Pentapus.”

Sokka continues his wailing, albeit at a lower volume. His eyes dart back and forth between the Pentapuses that are now  _ sucking his skin with their evil Pentapus tentacles. _ Then Aang reaches out with his classic Avatar fearlessness, and…

Tickles one Pentapus gently? Affectionately? On the head?

It squeaks in delight and promptly unsticks itself. Aang pulls it right off. Warily, Sokka tries the next one and succeeds in detaching it too.

The Pentapuses turn out useful- Katara passes the suction-cup-tentacle marks off as “Pentapox,” and Sokka sells the act with his top-notch dramatic skills, and they manage to chase off a bunch of Fire Nation guards. As Sokka cups the little critter in his hands, he can’t help thinking it’s  _ cute,  _ too.

Pretty soon they fake an entire plague of Pentapox and smuggle all of the citizens out of Omashu, right under the governor’s nose. Sokka congratulates himself on a plan well-executed until a Fire Nation invader insinuates his way into their group- a guileless, toddling invader who keeps making grabby-hands at Sokka’s nose.

Turns out, when they left Omashu, they accidentally dragged the governor’s son along with them. The governor offers to trade King Bumi to get his kid back. Sokka sees no way in which this can go wrong.

(Sokka can see sixteen ways this goes wrong, but he’s keeping the list to himself for Aang’s sake. He simply mutters all his hypotheticals under his breath- not like anyone’s listening.)

So, Sokka has identified sixteen ways this can go wrong, but he hadn’t accounted for three teenagers showing up to handle a highly sensitive Fire Nation hostage situation. For a second he mistakes the middle one for Zuko- whoever they are, they’ve got the same extra-fancy gold-edged armor, and there’s something similar that he can’t put his finger on in their faces. But this one’s a girl with makeup and a full head of hair and…

“Is that a crown?” Sokka mutters to himself. He feels something poke his rib- probably the baby sticking his foot where it doesn’t belong. Again.

“The deal’s off,” declares one of the other girls, and oh, fun, she’s the one who tried to knife them to death last night. She waves her hand. There goes Bumi back to prison as a metal chain hauls his box away-

“Wait!” The girl in the golden armor speaks, her voice shrill and piercing. “I propose a different deal.”

The chain halts. Then it rolls back down.

“What do you want?” Aang calls.

“Information.” She walks forward to meet him. “I suspect you’re the Avatar and his companions. That means we have a common enemy.”

“Somehow I really doubt that,” calls Sokka from a safe distance.

“I’m on a mission to capture Zuko,” she retorts.

“What,” Sokka quips before he can stop himself, “did you lose your honor too?”

The girl does a double take and then lets out a laugh that will haunt Sokka in his nightmares. “I see you’ve talked to him. Then you know-“ she takes another casual step forward, and every hair stands up on the back of Sokka’s neck- “that he’s feeble, dim-witted, cowardly, and generally an embarrassment to the royal family. I’ve been sent to find him and make sure he brings no further shame to the Fire Nation.”

Aang starts to say something, but Sokka gets there first. “How do we know you’re not lying, and just trying to find Zuko to team up with him?”

She laughs again, an off-key screeching sound. “That does sound like me, doesn’t it? But no. Here are the Fire Lord’s official orders.”

She pulls out a scroll with a very-official red-and-gold seal and unrolls it. Sokka squints, but he won’t get close enough to read it- because it could still be a fake, and because he doesn’t want to die.

(Still he feels a sudden tug on his hand that nearly pitches him into the ground, face-first. He again chalks it up to baby weirdness.)

“If you want your King Bumi,” she announces, “tell me everything you know about Zuko’s whereabouts.”

Sokka, Katara and Aang all look at each other.

“...What are you going to do to Zuko?” Aang says, like he’s  _ worried _ for the guy.

“Nothing too terrible,” she snorts. “We might just lock him up where he won’t see the sun again.”

Sokka can’t deny he’s been fantasizing about doing exactly that to their personal Avatar-chaser. He looks at Katara, and she’s thinking the same thing.

“We haven’t seen him in a while,” Aang finally says. “Not since he tried to ambush us at the North Pole.”

“He failed miserably, I assume?”

Sokka feels a little embarrassed for Zuko as he confirms, “Yeah, pretty much.”

“Excellent,” she says. “I won’t make the same mistake.”

And then everything’s bright and blue and on fire.

/

They escape, but Bumi doesn’t. Though they could’ve gotten him out, he insists on staying behind, simply offering Aang mystical advice about finding a different earthbending teacher. Sokka doesn’t get all this cryptic hand-wavy gibberish. He’s glad nothing magical ever happens to him.

“We might’ve just met Zuko’s baby sister,” Sokka says casually, once they’ve gotten safely away from Omashu. “Same gold armor, plus she had a crown.”

Katara frowns. “There’s no way. Why would anyone try to capture their own brother?”

“Yeah, and I don’t get why the Fire Nation would be mad at him anyway,” Aang says, sounding confused and awfully young. “Wasn’t he  _ supposed _ to be chasing me?”

“The girl said he was bad at it,” Sokka muses. “Which is bad news, if they’ve got people  _ better _ at hunting you.”

“How would anyone be better?” Katara says, picking up on his worries. “We barely survived Zuko as it was. Remember how he got that giant mole to track us? If we hadn’t been at a perfume factory, he would’ve gotten Aang.”

“And he got  _ way _ too close with the pirates,” Aang recalls with a wince.

“And remember Roku’s temple? I don’t even know how he got to the sanctuary, it’s not like the layout made sense,” says Sokka.

She frowns. “But they called him a traitor, didn’t they? Maybe he broke into a sacred space that day.”

“He’s good at breaking into places,” Aang says, contemplative. “I never told you this, but...he broke me out of that military base, when you were both sick. And then he tried to capture me again, but he was really cool for a minute there. He’s like a trained acrobat, and he took on ten soldiers with his swords-“

“Swords?” Sokka exclaims with what might just be jealousy. “As in  _ multiple swords?” _

Aang nods. “He can use two broadswords at a time, it’s epic!”

“I...kinda want to see that.”

Katara scowls at him. “He’ll probably just stab both of us simultaneously!”

“That girl said he wasn’t strong or smart or brave,” Aang reflects, sounding confused again. “And I don’t like Zuko either, but only because he’s not  _ nice.  _ Not the other stuff.”

“Gotta give the guy credit for creativity,” Sokka comments, “and determination. He’s probably tracking us right now, plotting his next abduction.”

“Unless that girl’s scared him into hiding. Maybe they really have sent someone better,” Katara says softly.

“If anyone better than Zuko comes after us,” Sokka declares, half-wry and half-terrified, “we’re doomed.”

/

The next thing to come after them is a full-blown tornado.

(Full-blown, get it?)

Said tornado springs up out of nowhere and flings them off Appa’s back, right into a creepy, sticky swamp. Still, Sokka picks himself up out of the gunky water elegantly, without the slightest complaint.

“Sokka,” Katara observes, “you’ve got an elbow leech.”

Sokka panics, and flails, and yanks the thing off with a dreadful  _ pop,  _ screeching all the while. “Why do things keep  _ attaching to me?” _

Katara shows him no sympathy whatsoever.

Regardless, Sokka is a man of action. He takes his sword and starts hacking his way out of the swamp’s endless vines, even though Aang and Katara keep whining about it. Katara claims the swamp feels alive, like he’s hurting its feelings, and Sokka rolls his eyes at that. Besides that leech, he hasn’t felt anything even remotely odd- no imagined touches, no weird breezes. 

(Nothing since that time he nearly fell over in Omashu, which he’s already decided shouldn’t count.)

There’s nothing freaky going on here. No reason to worry about the tendrils of mist reaching right for them- it’s obviously just swamp gas. And there’s no reason to panic when a shrill birdcall rips through the night, painfully similar to a human scream. The three of them panic anyway.

“I think we should build a fire,” Sokka says, teeth chattering as he clings onto the other two for dear life.

/

He builds the campfire- no thanks to Katara and Aang, who just stand around judging him as he cuts their firewood- and there’s nothing of concern anywhere. Nothing but the milli-flies that have decided to circle Sokka specifically. 

“Does anyone else get the feeling that we're being watched?” Katara says, huddling with her arms around her knees.

Sokka scoffs, “Please, we're all alone out here.”

He slashes at one of the milli-flies with his sword, and it casually explodes into a giant ball of light. Which just happens to illuminate a bunch of glowing eyes, fixed down on them.

Nothing of concern whatsoever.

/

They fall asleep, somehow, as the fire naturally dwindles down to embers. Sokka curls up facing said fire, sword clutched like a safety blanket. Despite the creepy atmosphere, he manages to sink into a deep slumber. Aang and Katara are asleep right behind him, their backs all pressed together. It’s way more non-fatal bodily contact than he usually gets, and it’s surprisingly pleasant.

(He’s sleeping deeply, which is why he doesn’t notice when one of the swamp’s vines latches onto his leg, curling around again and again and again.)

In the dead of night a swamp monster attacks, yanking all three of them apart. Sokka fights valiantly, slashing wildly at its vine-y limbs, but he still lands face-first in swamp water, utterly alone.

There’s a pool of sunlight in front of him. In it stands a young man in red and brown robes with gold on the edges. He’s facing the other way, and at first Sokka can only see pale skin and black hair worn loose, barely down to his shoulders. Then the man turns, light pouring down on his right side while his left side falls into shadow. The lighting’s physically impossible, but that’s just how it is.

Sokka’s too far away to see his face properly, and yet he can sense every detail. Sun-kissed skin. A heart-shaped face, outlined by hair that dips right at the center of his forehead. Warm honeyed eyes and a perfect dusky pink mouth and he seems so familiar, Sokka racks his brain to figure out why he already knows this man intimately-

That mouth quirks into a smile- sweet, and a bit hesitant- and he lifts one hand in a little wave.

“Hello,” he says, “Zuko here!”

Those three words dunk Sokka in ice.

Suddenly Sokka notices the sprawling red scar on the left side of his face- how could he have missed it before? Suddenly that sweet smile’s devious to the core. Sokka does the only thing he can- he draws his sword and  _ charges. _

“Zuko? I swear to Yue, I’m going to get you-“

Zuko doesn’t respond with a wave of flame. Instead his face falls, disappointed- how dare he look disappointed, like  _ Sokka’s _ somehow in the wrong here _ - _ and he steps out of the sunlight. Then he promptly disappears right into the depths of the swamp, tricky bastard that he is. Still Sokka catches a glimpse of red in the shadows, and he strikes before Zuko can, flinging Boomerang right at that elusive point in the distance. He waits for a  _ thunk,  _ maybe a satisfying shriek. He waits for Boomerang to zip right back into his hands.

Nothing happens.

Zuko never comes back. Neither does Boomerang. 

Throwing up his arms in bewilderment, Sokka trudges forward towards where he’d seen Zuko, muttering hypotheses under his breath. “This is just a trick of the light. It’s swamp gas. I hit my head running away last night. I'm going crazy?”

He cycles through his theories. That last one seems the likeliest.

He discovers Boomerang glinting deep in a murky puddle of swamp water. There’s no further trace of Zuko. Sokka keeps hunting for him though, and for Aang and Katara, and for any way out of this creepy vine-y ecological manifestation of an armpit.

Aang and Katara end up finding  _ him _ by crashing into him and knocking him to the ground.

“What do you guys think you're doing?” Sokka snaps. “I've been looking all over for you!”

“Well,” Katara snaps back, “I've been wandering around looking for  _ you!” _

A little awkwardly, Aang admits, “I was chasing some girl.”

Katara’s eyes go wide. “What girl?”

“I don't know,” Aang says. It sounds like the truth. “I heard laughing and I saw some girl in a fancy dress.”

“Well-” Sokka turns up the snappishness to eleven- “there must be a tea party here and we just didn't get our invitations!”

When Katara speaks, her voice is shot through with sorrow. “I thought I saw Mom.”

Oh.

Sokka inhales deeply, trying to let go of any nasty feelings stirred up by hallucinating nasty princes. “Look, we were all just scared and hungry and our minds were playing tricks on us. That's why we all saw things out here.”

He regrets the words immediately. 

Not missing a beat, Katara demands, “You saw something too?”

Sokka turns his head away. “I saw...Yue. Which makes sense. ‘Cause I, uh, think about her all the time, and you saw Mom, someone you...miss a lot?”

He trails off, sure he’s failed to sell his story. By some miracle Katara doesn’t pry.

“What about me?” Aang pipes up. “I didn't know the girl I saw. And all our visions led us right here.”

He begins poking around, guiding them to a tree that gives the glaciers back home a run for their money, size-wise.

“It’s the heart of the swamp,” he declares in his most pious Avatar voice. “It's been calling us here. I knew it!”

Sokka doesn’t like this. Sokka doesn’t like this one bit.

“It's just a tree,” he protests, trying to keep the desperation out of his voice. “It can't call anyone. For the last time, there's nothing after us and there's nothing magical happening here.”

Which, obviously, is when the giant vine swamp monster tackles them again. But that turns out to just be another waterbender, maneuvering the water inside the vines. Ta-da! Nothing supernatural to worry about.

(Okay, so bending itself might be evidence of the supernatural. Sokka’s postponed that crisis for another day.)

A couple minutes later, Huu- the waterbender who’s thankfully stopped attacking them- has roped them into a grand spiritual lecture on how the tree’s connected to everything in the world, and the swamp’s connected to everything in the world, and the world’s connected to everything in the world too. We’re all one and the same. Sokka nearly snorts that, no, he is decidedly the  _ opposite _ of, say, Zuko. Still he takes pity on Aang, who’s totally engrossed in the lesson, and refrains from spoiling the moment.

Katara interrupts instead. “But what did our visions mean?”

“In the swamp,” Huu explains, in his rough grave voice, “we see visions of people we've lost, people we loved, folks we think are gone. But the swamp tells us they're not. We're still connected to them. Time is an illusion and so is death.”

Well, that sounds fake. The time part, and the death part, and also the “people we’ve lost” part. He highly doubts they’re lucky enough to have lost Zuko for good- the guy’s like Boomerang’s evil counterpart, no matter how far you throw him he always comes back. And even if it’s Opposite Day and Zuko’s given up their trail, Sokka’s certainly never  _ loved _ him.

He tries to find some way to object without revealing that he totally lied about seeing Yue. Fortunately, Aang challenges Huu for him: “But what about my vision? It was someone I had never met.”

“You're the Avatar. You tell me,” Huu replies, because spirits forbid anyone ever be  _ clear _ about their mysticism.

“Time is an illusion,” Aang says, puzzling it out. “So, it's someone I  _ will _ meet.”

When Huu nods in approval, Sokka contemplates his own vision for a hot second. He decides that time’s an illusion, so he saw Zuko from some alternate timeline where he didn’t turn evil. That timeline and its alternate Zuko are both very much dead now, thank you, and Sokka will shoo them out of his brain.

“Sorry to interrupt the lesson-” he rises to his feet, totally satisfied with his conclusion- “but we still need to find Appa and Momo.”

Aang finds them. He lays one hand on the trunk of the tree and lets a pure white ball of energy out of his fingers, because being the Avatar means you can do that, apparently. Said ball of energy starts darting down the tree and into the ground, leaving a bright white trail in its wake. Two seconds later, it’s led them to Appa and Momo.

/

“Well,” Sokka says that night over dinner, “I hope you realize now that nothing strange was going on here. Just a bunch of greasy people living in a swamp.”

Katara retorts, “What about the visions?”

“I told you, we were hungry. I'm eating a giant bug!”

(Insects are like meat, and meat is always good.)

“But,” Aang adds, “what about when the tree showed me where Appa and Momo were?”

Sokka dismisses that with a wave of his hand, “That's Avatar stuff, that doesn't count. The only thing I can't figure out is how you made that tornado that sucked us down.”

Huu frowns. “I can't do anything like that. I just bend the water in the plants.”

“...Well, no accounting for weather,” Sokka declares cheerily. “Still, there's absolutely nothing mysterious about the swamp!”


	3. Chapter 3

For the next couple weeks, all supernatural phenomena give Sokka a break. Toph’s powers are awesome, but not outright magical. The incident with Kyoshi showing up was more Avatar weirdness and therefore doesn’t qualify. Appa starts molting, but Aang insists that’s a natural sign of the coming of spring.

Then Toph wakes them up in the middle of the night, insisting they’re about to get hit with an avalanche that isn’t an avalanche. Yawning, they pick up and move camp and spot a giant steam machine chugging along below them.

So the not-avalanche probably isn’t magical. Doesn’t stop it from being scary, though.

Katara and Toph keep sniping at each other even after they land in a new place, never mind that Sokka’s just a guy trying to sleep here. The catfight gets cut off when the machine shows up again, like it’s honed in on them by sheer willpower…

“It could be Zuko,” Katara says, plucking the thought right out of Sokka’s head. “We haven’t seen him since the North Pole.”

“Who’s Zuko?” asks Toph.

What Sokka would give to be that innocent again.

“Oh,” he says out loud, “just some angry freak with a ponytail who’s tracked us all over the world.”

“What’s wrong with ponytails, Ponytail?” Katara shoots back, hitting below the belt in blatant violation of the Sibling Code.

“This-“ he points dramatically to the back of his head- “is a warrior’s wolf-tail!”

“Well,” she teases, “it certainly tells the other warriors that you’re fun and perky!”

“Because Zuko, who  _ really _ mastered the ponytail, was  _ sooo _ fun and perky.”

(Sokka insistently does not think about Not-Zuko running around the swamp, with a smile that was adorably, unrealistically pleasant.)

Something presses on his stomach just seconds later. Sokka reaches out and feels Momo’s ears. “No, Momo, shh. Sleepy time.”

Two seconds later, the machine’s back.

They get a good look at it now. It’s a Fire Nation tank, massive and ugly and metal, though the design’s different from what Sokka’s seen before. They hesitate before running. Sokka low-key hopes it’s Zuko. Because there’s no ice around anymore, but now they’ve got a master earthbender on their team, and Toph can totally bury him underground again so they can all just get some  _ sleep- _

The three girls from Omashu step out instead, riding giant iguana steeds, and Sokka takes one short, sleep-deprived moment to be disappointed it’s not Zuko.

“We can take them,” Toph declares. “Three on three.”

She’s clearly too tired to count, which bodes poorly for any attempts at combat. Sokka corrects her: “Actually, Toph, there’s four of us.”

“Oh, I'm sorry, I didn't count you. You know, no bending and all.”

She doesn’t sound even the slightest bit apologetic. 

“I can  _ still fight!”  _

She smirks. “Okay, three on three plus Sokka.”

Sokka screeches, near-apoplectic. For reasons completely unrelated to Toph’s insinuation, he’s the first to run away. 

Appa crash-lands pretty soon after that. Katara really blows up, and Toph stomps off, shaking the ground as she goes. Sokka just wants a nap. If he doesn’t nap, he’ll get twitchy, and if he gets twitchy, he’ll start imagining breezes brushing his neck or tapping his shoulders again, and then he will  _ literally die _ of stress.

Which is one way to solve the sleep-deprivation problem, but still.

Aang comes up with a plan- he’ll leave a fake trail with loose bison fur, while Katara and Sokka can go look for Toph on Appa. 

They find Toph, right as the two non-bender girls find  _ them.  _ Katara gets pinned down with knives. Sokka gets chi-blocked, and for the record that is one sensation he  _ never  _ needs to repeat- it’s all pins and needles, even while his limbs loll uselessly. Toph saves them. She just locks herself in one of her rock tents where the girls can’t get to her, and then she lifts them onto giant slabs of dirt and chucks them into the river.

“This is where you clap,” she informs them after emerging.

They can’t clap, thanks to the whole knife-and-chi-blocking thing, but she seems to forgive them. With only a little posturing, she frees them and gets them back on Appa. Then they try to catch up with Aang before Princess Blue Fire does.

(Sokka imagines Zuko’s with them in spirit. You know, the whole chasing the Avatar thing? It’s right up his alley.)

Miraculously, they arrive right after Katara restores feeling to Sokka’s arms with some careful healing, and right before anything’s on fire. They’ve caught the princess mid-villainous monologue.

“You don't see the family resemblance?” she simpers, before raising her hand to cover the left side of her face. “Maybe this’ll help.”

“Knew it,” Sokka exclaims, right before chucking Boomerang at her crown. She ducks it in both directions, which instantly puts her in a league above Zuko. Katara, Toph, and Aang engage her in full-blown bending combat, and Sokka decides to contribute all he can.

“All he can” is a never-ending flow of trash talk.

“I get the feeling you weren’t cuddled enough as kids. Did they stick you in a metal tank to rock you? Is that why you’re so  _ blue _ all the time?” Ducking the debris from Toph’s attacks, he keeps heckling her from the sidelines, barely pausing for breath. “Bet you never saw your mom. She’s too busy sticking kids into ovens!”

“That’s more our father,” she snaps back, slipping it in with surprising grace while back-flipping over a column Toph just raised. “And he only baked Zuzu.”

Zuzu.

_ Zuzu. _

Sokka has no idea how to respond to that, so he just scowls for a second and moves on to the next line of attack. “And what’s with your sense of fashion? Is that why the Fire Nation kills everything that moves, ‘cause you need blood to dye everything the ugliest red  _ ever seen?”  _ She completely ignores that, that’s cool, he just needs to pick a different tactic. “By the way, Your Highness, Zuko’s kicks are better than yours.”

And that earns him a fire blast. Not a serious one, he stumbles out of the way in time- but he’s found a sore spot. Katara takes advantage, smacking her with a water whip, and then Toph somehow drags her princessy foot right down into the dirt. She throws blue fire right at her  _ own foot, _ and seriously, do Ozai’s kids have any sense of self-preservation? By blowing all the dirt away, she frees herself. Still, she’s on the back foot from then on. They all gang up on her, pressing her back towards a wall, ready to hit her with three elements and an equally powerful boomerang.

Suddenly, she does the one thing Zuko never did.

“I give up.” She raises both hands. “You got me. A princess surrenders with honor.”

After flitting back and forth, her eyes settle on one of them.

She sweeps one hand in a magnificent arc.

Throws bright blue fire right at Sokka’s face.

/

Sokka wakes up in the darkness.

“Am I dead?”

It’s a perfectly reasonable question.

Katara’s face moves into view, and as Sokka squints, the night sky comes into focus behind her. Below him, Appa rumbles.

“No,” she says. Her voice sounds wet and raw. “But we don’t know why.”

Gingerly, he raises one hand to his face and finds bandages, but they don’t hurt when he presses down. “Better not to look a gift ostrich-horse in the mouth?”

“Sokka,” Aang says from somewhere behind him, sounding uncharacteristically grave. “Why didn’t you tell us you were a firebender?”

…He’s dead. Sokka’s clearly in an evil afterlife, sentenced to an eternity of terrible jokes.

“A  _ what?” _

“She would’ve killed you,” Toph says, sniffling from down by his feet. “That should’ve killed you, but then you blocked most of the fire. Your firebending  _ saved your life.” _

Sokka pushes himself up. “I don’t know what you thought you saw, but clearly it was a trick of the light.”

“I don’t get tricked by light,” she says, and yeah, he probably should’ve thought of that.

“Look-“ he facepalms, and silently thanks Katara for healing him well enough to not regret it- “I swear on  _ Yue’s name  _ I’m not a secret firebender!”

“Then what  _ happened?”  _ Katara pleads.

Sokka scrunches his eyes closed and searches for some other plausible explanation. He can’t find one.

“...I might be the littlest bit cursed?”

/

“Okay, so we’ve got six possible reasons why I could’ve turned magical.” Sokka’s forgoing sleep one more time to write out a chart. The most important chart of Sokka’s entire life. “Best case scenario, it’s Yue’s blessing from the Spirit World.” He squints up at the crescent moon. “Can you give us a sign if you saved my life back there?”

Aang frowns. “I’m not sure spirits can talk to you directly like that. She’s really far away.”

“Look,” Katara says, pointing upwards, “I think the moon twinkled!”

“Maybe?” Sokka squints. “But it could’ve been that cirrus cloud just messing with the brightness.”

Toph shoves one foot out to kick Aang. “You’re the Avatar, why don’t you try talking to her?”

“Oh, right,” he says, nervously rubbing the back of his neck. “Yue, can you let us know if you’re not the one guarding Sokka?”

“No!” Sokka exclaims. “I said to give us a sign if it  _ was _ her.”

“But can’t she let us know which way?”

“How many favors are you going to ask for here? I bet Yue’s really busy-“

“Also,” Katara inserts, “isn’t it possible she’s looking out for him even if she didn’t bend the fire?”

So they set the Yue possibility aside for now.

“Next up, we triggered some deep ritual thing in that temple with Fong,” Sokka says, frowning at the chart. “There was fire acting weirdly there too, right? That chi tea could’ve unlocked Aang’s subconscious firebending.”

His eyes go wide with terror. “What? No! No way, I can’t be firebending all over the place without controlling it! What if I have a nightmare and I start a forest fire in my sleep and Hei Bai comes and drags me away to the spirit world-“

They set the Fong possibility aside too. 

“So the next likeliest option, according to my ranking system, is...” Sokka breathes in deep, preparing himself. “The labyrinth curse.”

Katara considers it, resting her chin on both hands. “You  _ were _ acting extra-jumpy that day.”

Aang frowns. “Did anything weird happen to you, when you were on your own?”

“My torch took longer than I expected to burn out? Also...I might’ve broken a sacred badgermole statue.”

“You  _ what?” _ Toph squawks.

“And I kinda disturbed an ancient earthbender grave,” he finishes in a mutter. Thankfully, Toph’s offended shrieking over the statue drowns that part right out.

“You also could’ve been cursed by the swamp,” Aang sighs. “We  _ told _ you not to chop up everything in sight…”

“Hey,” Sokka retorts, “the firebending saved me from Zuko’s sister. Maybe the swamp decided to  _ bless me!” _

He receives three looks of utter disdain.

/

They run through the other scenarios Sokka’s listed his chart, such as:

  * Sokka somehow soaked up power from just being near Kyoshi, when she showed up on Avatar Day
  * Yue’s gotten Sokka the support of some other powerful spirit, probably Agni himself
  * Sokka’s secretly super-important to the fate of the world, so destiny itself intervened to save him



Sokka likes all of those possibilities, but they get convincingly shot down. Toph takes special pleasure in laughing at that last one. 

“Right,” she giggles, “Sokka’s gonna take down the Fire Lord with his boomerang.”

“Hey, don’t count Boomerang out- it’s got powers beyond your comprehension!”

“Sure, maybe  _ Boomerang _ blocked that girl’s firebending!”

She’s clearly teasing. Still, Sokka discreetly adds that possibility to his chart.

/

After several hours of arguing whether the moon really twinkled at them or if it’s just wishful thinking, they decide to get actual data.

_ “I _ still think we should go to Aunt Wu,” Katara sniffs.

“I will literally beg the curse to blow me up before you get me in that town again-“

“We’re near the Misty Palms Oasis,” Aang interrupts. “It used to be a thriving commercial hub, a big stop for all the traders in the Si Wong desert. I bet we can find someone with information there.”

The Misty Palms Oasis turns out to just be a miserable plot of sand, but they do run into an over-friendly anthropologist with tales of a giant library, out in the desert. They find it soon enough, descending into the now-buried library with their new professor friend while Toph stays behind with Appa. 

Then a giant owl spirit finds them.

“I am Wan Shi Tong,” he rumbles in a voice that booms like thunder, “‘He Who Knows Ten Thousand Things.’ And you are obviously humans, which, by the way, are no longer permitted in my study.”

“Oh, good,” Sokka says, “so we’re all humans!”

Hey, it’s a legitimate thing to question. Maybe he got turned half-firebending demon at some point.

“Hmm,” the spirit grunts. “In my experience, humans only learn things to get the edge on other humans.”

“That’s not why  _ we’re _ here,” Sokka replies, emboldened by the fact that it’s the truth. “There’s been weird magical things happening around me for a while, and we thought you might have a book to explain it...O, All-Knowing Feathered One?”

He winces at his attempted flattery. For his part, Wan Shi Tong seems less than impressed. Still, he relents. “I shall let you peruse my collection.”

They nod. Satisfied, he lifts one rustling wing and summons forth a fox assistant. “Curses seem likely for this one,” he tells them. “Start there.”

/

A troop of foxes gathers around them, pulling scrolls and books off shelves and depositing them on a central desk. While the professor wanders around, Sokka, Katara and Aang hunch over said desk, flipping through texts as fast as they can.

Aang squints at his current scroll. “Hey, Sokka. Do you think a scorned girl might’ve taken a doll of you and nailed it to a tree?”

“No, who have I scorned?” Sokka says, right as Katara says, “Wait, that works?”

Sokka can see her designing a Jet-shaped doll in her head right now.

“Maybe Yue became a snow-woman phantom,” Katara yelps, passing over her book. “Look, there’s a story about a Moon Princess who gets trapped on earth and haunts people every full moon...”

“But that book’s at least a century old,” Sokka points out. “Plus it wasn’t the full moon, last time we ran into the princess. Hey-“ he waves at one of the foxes- “do you know any magic that’d mess with fire?”

With any luck, he actually got  _ blessed _ with fire resistance at some point. Maybe something good happened to him for once. Right on cue, one of the foxes brings them a new batch of fire-related books.

“Uh, Sokka? Have you noticed a ball of lightning in your navel?”

“A  _ what?”  _

For half-a-minute, Sokka glares at the scroll Aang’s unrolled and verifies that yes, some people allegedly get haunted by balls of lightning in their belly buttons, and no, there is no lightning in his. Small mercies.

A fox nips at his tunic, redirecting his attention to a new book: “Maladies of the Soul.” It’s got a nice index, and Sokka promptly looks up “fire.”

_ “Fever of Flame: _

_ An affliction that visits the most spirited of firebenders, when the vision of the self is fractured by action…” _

“Yadda, yadda, yadda.” Sokka flips back to the index and finds another mention of fire, under “yurei.”

_ “Yurei:  _

_ In exceptionally rare and tragic cases, an unquiet soul is barred from the next life after their death, instead caught in-between as a yurei, or ghost. To become a ghost, a soul must have been animated in life by remarkable passion, a drive towards some yet-unfulfilled goal. They must also have met a grotesque end, their death arising from betrayal or some other form of deeply personal misery. Finally, they must have been deprived of a fitting funeral, whether by accident or disrespect.” _

Sokka meant to just skim ahead to the mention of fire, but Katara’s started looking over his shoulder and reading the passage out to herself, quietly. He waits for her to finish before switching to the next page.

By then, Aang’s joined the fun. “That sounds awful.”

“Really?” says Sokka. “Sounds like poetic gobbledygook to me.”

By his heels a fox spirit growls at him, and he sighs and turns the page. 

_ “Ghosts are often tied to a place of significance, such as the location of the death, or to a person of significance, such as a loved one. Descriptions of the yurei’s appearance are rare and unreliable, as these phantoms are widely held to be invisible.” _

“Ah-ha,” Sokka exclaims. “If they’re invisible, then how would anyone know they exist? All made-up, I tell you-“

_ “Different ghosts make themselves known in different ways,”  _ Katara reads with a touch of extra acid,  _ “perhaps by making noise or by touching the place or person they haunt. If blessed with powerful bending in life, they may show similar abilities after death; vengeful yurei have been blamed for tempests, earthquakes and wildfires.” _

Sokka sniffs. “How’s that for a convenient legal defense?  _ I _ didn’t burn down your forest, clearly a  _ ghost _ did it-“

_ “However,”  _ Katara cuts in, enunciating viciously,  _ “some descriptions say ghosts appear as they did in life. Others- more likely arising from the theater than truth- claim they dress in eerie white, with long black hair free from any top-knot or queue. Playwrights in the Fire Nation, particularly famed for theatrical excess and a disregard for facts-“ _

Sokka snorts. Guess even books full of paranormal fiction have the occasional nugget of truth.

_ “-represent the ghosts of firebenders with hitodama, balls of unnaturally colored fire that openly reveal the inner flame.” _

“This is really interesting,” Aang says, “but I don’t think that’s what’s going on with you. You don’t have any loved ones who were really powerful firebenders, do you?”

Katara shakes her head. Sokka scoffs a little more loudly than he should in a spirit library.

“But I think Mom believed in this,” Katara adds quietly. “Maybe it was just a story, but she told me a friend of hers became a ghost- a little girl who froze during a blizzard.”

After a second, Sokka starts reading aloud himself.  _ “To rid the world of a ghost, the soul must be put to rest. Some yurei may be appeased simply by receiving proper funerary rights. The rest may find peace by fulfilling whatever wish drove them in life, or by slaking their thirst for vengeance. Should those methods fail, exorcism rituals prove effective in pushing all but the most stubborn ghosts to the afterlife.” _

“So that’s irrelevant,” he concludes. “Cool, but irrelevant. And still possibly fictional.”

He drops the book in front of the nearest fox and plows on to the next volume in the stack.

/

They leave Wan Shi Tong’s library with brains stuffed full of horror stories- apparently some undead beings have oozing goiters  _ which they drink from,  _ and that is so not an image Sokka ever needed to acquaint himself with. Unfortunately, they’re no closer to guessing whether Sokka’s apparent firebending is a blessing, or a curse, or just a weird spiritual quirk.

They tell Toph all this while climbing onto Appa, and she tells them a bunch of sandbenders tried to steal Appa and got their butts whooped, Blind-Bandit-style. They swap stories all the way back to the Oasis village. Then Professor Zei waylays Aang for another observation session, and Sokka gets ahead of the group and walks into the little village bar, thirsty from the day’s work. There’s a lady at the counter with a particularly pretty drink- the surface is pearlescent, shimmering with rainbows.

“I’ll take one of those,” Sokka says.

“No, he won’t,” she retorts without looking up.

Sokka frowns. “What is it?”

“Top-grade cactus juice. A kid like you won’t appreciate it.”

Sokka’s not sure if that’s a dig at his age or just at how clearly he’s from out of town, but either way he resents it. “Actually, I’ll take  _ two _ of those.”

“Boy-“

“Two!”

When Sokka takes his first sip, he stops for a second to evaluate the flavor. It’s hard to describe, but it isn’t alcoholic in the slightest. Thus he gulps down both cups without a worry.

“Why’d you think I wouldn’t like it?” He turns to the lady, who now has a massive goiter swelling under her chin.

It’s oozing cactus juice.

Sokka tumbles off his chair, and everyone in the bar’s turned to laugh at him in unison, a thrumming drone that’s coincidentally synched up with his heartbeat. Screeching a little, he stumbles out the door. The lady follows him out, now catching her ooze in her cactus juice cup with the parasol- it’s surprisingly stylish- and she starts talking to Momo. Or maybe she’s talking to Katara, but Sokka can’t imagine why. Momo’s the one who understands human speech.

“He chugged two…hallucinogen…keep an eye out for anything weird...”

Sokka keeps an eye out for anything weird. He spins around in a circle to take in the oasis, which is lush and full of water. Toph’s doing a headstand which makes sense because she sees with her head, and Professor Zei’s dissecting Aang to catalogue how Air Nomads look on the inside, and Appa and Momo are discussing philosophy. Nothing weird there.

He completes the circle, squinting into the desert where there was a mirage earlier, and there’s still something hazy and silvery there and-

Oh. Now that’s weird.

“Hi!” Sokka says, waving.

Katara turns her head, looks, and then frowns at him. “Sokka, there’s nothing there.”

Sokka barely hears her. Even after the words register, he certainly doesn’t care, because there’s a teenager right in front of him, staring back at him with giant widened eyes like a startled seal-deer. Sokka thinks for a minute and then resolves to set him at ease: “Hello, translucent boy friend!”

Toph chokes behind Sokka.  _ “What _ did you just say?”

“Look!” Sokka points right at him.

“I’m looking,” she says dryly. “Since when do you have a ‘boyfriend’?”

“Since now- he’s a boy and he’s the friendliest!” Sokka frowns. “Wait. Are you a friend? Or is that just my subconscious saying I  _ want _ you to be a friend?”

Aang’s sniggering about something. Sokka doesn’t stop to figure out what, he’s too interested in his new maybe-friend. He decides this is a friend.

Friends deserve hugs.

Sokka darts forward, arms outstretched, but the boy somehow shoots backwards, moving inhumanly fast until he’s far out of reach. Instantly, Sokka falls onto his face, even though he’s positive he didn’t trip on anything or get pushed. No, if anything it felt like a _pull._

“He pulled me over here,” Sokka whines into the ground, gesturing towards the boy. “But he’s over there. Like a string.” He lifts the hand in question and squints at it. “Do you see the string?”

Katara comes over and pulls Sokka up by the other hand. “Your friend’s a real meanie, huh?”

“No, he didn’t mean to,” he says, defensive on instinct. He spins around and gives the boy a pleading look. “Right?”

The boy’s still standing and staring at him. After a long moment, he slowly shakes his head.

Sokka has an idea.

Without warning, Sokka charges backwards, not looking where he’s going. His legs are going one way, but his head’s still twisted around to watch his new friend. There’s another weird tug on his hand, and  _ boom,  _ the boy’s hand jerks forward, bringing his body along with it.

“String theory confirmed,” Sokka announces. “I’m a genius!”

Nobody else seems to recognize his contribution to science, but he basks in Appa’s applause. His _ appause.  _

So that’s one experiment completed. Sokka strides forward to follow Professor Zei’s example and perform a more thorough inspection. He rattles off his observations; hopefully Momo’s taking notes.

The boy doesn’t move far enough to knock Sokka over again. Still, when Sokka approaches he flinches, shrinking away. 

“He’s dressed entirely in white,” Sokka reports in his most scientific voice. “It’s puffy. And flowy. And- hey, could you drop the veil for a second?”

The boy tilts his head, brow scrunched up in confusion. Then he understands and pushes back his snow-white hood, revealing the entirety of his head.

“He’s bald,” Sokka declares, “with really long hair. It’s  _ so shiny- _ ” 

“Is it black?” Katara calls, seemingly miles away. The ghost turns his head to look at her.

“Whoa, how’d you know?” Sokka says, not pausing to get an answer. “And his hair’s up. It’s also all down.”

The boy whips his head around to glare at Sokka, and his long ponytail ought to whip Sokka’s nose. Yet it doesn’t, instead flying straight through to the other side.

“And his hair isn’t there!” Sokka yelps.

“Yeah,” Aang says. “There isn’t anyone there. Please just drink some water, and maybe lie down and sleep this off-”

Sleep? Who has time for sleep? Sokka’s too awake to sleep, suddenly finding himself face-to-face with the boy, who has glowy hypnotizing golden eyes and a  _ face.  _ Sokka’s fascinated by that face.

“Guys,” he says, too stunned to move. “Guys? Don’t tell the ghost, but he looks…” Sokka raises his voice, just to make sure the boy in front of him won’t hear.  _ “Gorgeous.” _

There’s a lot of yelping somewhere far away, but Sokka tunes it out. Nothing matters but the utter disbelief on this boy’s face. Disbelief, like he doesn’t believe Sokka could look at him and adore him on sight.

“You are,” he croons, like he’s approaching a frightened baby penguin-otter. “There’s a  _ rainbow _ on your face.”

It’s true. There’s color popping out, all over his otherwise pale visage. Mottled blue and purple spots. Crimson lines arcing across his skin. Then there’s the largest splash of color- a faded, dusky pink that spills across the left side of his face, the hue growing darker and more vivid around the eye.

Oh, no. 

Sokka’s suddenly small and cold all over, never mind that he’s in the middle of a scorching desert, because his scientific explorations have drawn him inexorably to a miserable conclusion. “Did someone hurt you?”

The boy stares at him like he’s been frozen.

“Did a lot of people hurt you?”

He looks like he’s been through a war. He looks like he lost. His whole face is a rainbow of color and pain, and he’s scowling back at Sokka but the scowl’s crossed with bewilderment and he looks so, so _ lost. _

“Can you talk?” Sokka asks. A quizzical look furrows up his brow.

The ghost’s scowl hardens. Then, his mouth forms the word “no,” but no sound comes out.

“That’s okay,” Sokka breathes. “That’s okay, I can talk enough for both of us.”

The boy nods. And nods. He keeps nodding like he’s trying to make a point, and after a second Sokka laughs, because he  _ does _ talk a lot, doesn’t he? It’s one of the curses of having such a big brain. He always has so much to say!

Now the boy gives him a scathing  _ look.  _ Sokka must’ve said that last bit out loud.

“Sokka,” Professor Zei says from somewhere in another dimension, “I’m afraid you’re simply hallucinating one of the creatures you read about in that charming library. You’ve just conjured up a textbook example of a ghost.”

A ghost?

“You’re a  _ ghost.”  _ A slow smile spreads across Sokka’s face as half his world shifts into place. "You gotta tell me what that’s like. How’s life?”

Sokka’s conscious did not make that pun. Sokka’s conscious would never make that pun. Sokka’s subconscious made that pun, and as his conscious races to catch up four things happen in rapid succession:

  1. The boy makes a thoroughly unfriendly hand-gesture, which. Fair.
  2. Sokka regrets all the decisions that have led him to be insensitive to the very first ghost he’s ever met in his life.
  3. Sokka decides the only way to pay for his mistakes and regain his honor is to give the ghost a hug.
  4. Sokka launches himself at said ghost, falls right through him because he’s a ghost, and winds up face-first in the ground again.



“Okay,” Aang says, scooping Sokka up from where he’s now sniffling into the sand. “I think that’s enough excitement for you.”

Sokka is forcibly hauled onto Appa’s back, mumbling out apologies all the way. 

“It’s okay,” says Katara. “We forgive you.”

“Not you, I’m sorry at  _ him! _ How would  _ you _ like to be a ghost and the first thing someone asks you is  _ ‘how’s life?’” _

He’s overwhelmed by his own sorriness. But Aang takes off, and they leave the ghost behind on the ground before he gets to fully hear how sorry Sokka is. Sokka buries his face in Appa’s saddle and starts apologizing for not apologizing faster until something flicks his cheek. He cranes his head up and finds his ghost drifting beside them, flying right beside Appa.

“He’s still here!” Sokka tries leaping out of the saddle to go for another hug, but Katara screeches and the ghost-

The ghost catches him. He plants both hands on Sokka’s face and pushes him back towards safety- oh yeah, Sokka forgot that he can’t float a thousand feet off the ground like ghosts can- with eyes widened in alarm. Then Katara yanks Sokka out of that exquisite moment, tugging him down by the shoulders.

“Sokka,” she says, “would you let us tie you to the saddle? Just so you don’t get hurt.”

Sokka probably says yes, because a few minutes later she’s tied one wrist to the saddle with that high-quality Fire Nation rope that Sokka got...sometime. He racks his brain, but he can’t remember when he saw it before.

He stops caring, because a second wave of cactus goodness bathes his brain at just that second. He can see right through the ghost now, and the world stops making any sense at all.

“I can see his soul,” he babbles at some point. “It’s full of balls! There’s a blue ball, and a red ball, and they’re on fire!”

/

When Sokka wakes up, it’s dark, and his head feels stuffed full of cotton. But there are no “ghosts” anymore. Spirits, High-Sokka really fell down the believing-in-paranormal-activity rabbit hole, didn’t he? Good thing Sokka’s sober skepticism’s back in control now.

Then he squints into thin air, as a couple things he said yesterday merge with the fractured images he remembers. It feels futile trying to put it all together, like reassembling a pot from shards.

Snow-white clothes, like camouflage armor designed for icy terrain.

Pale skin with a giant pink splotch on the left.

A smooth bald head, plus a ponytail.

“Hey,” he says, poking Katara. “I think I’m over the cactus juice. Do  _ you _ think that?”

Katara looks at him skeptically. “Do you still think Momo’s the only one here who can hold a civilized conversation?”

“...Uh. No. Sorry about that.”

Toph kicks his leg. “Do you still think you’d win Earth Rumble 7, if they let you in?”

“What?” he sputters _. _ “I mean...I could probably beat Fire Nation Man, but I wouldn’t claim to have a chance against  _ you.” _

She sniffs, appeased.

Aang turns to look at him from where he’s holding Appa’s reins. “Are you still being followed around by a ghost with the ‘most radiant eyes you’ve ever seen?’”

“Uh, about that.” Wincing, Sokka rubs his neck with one hand. “So just to check, we all agree I’ve got the cactus juice out of my system?”

He waits for them all to nod before he dares continue.

“Okay, so that’s the good news. The bad news is I’m probably not cursed.” He holds up a hand, stopping the inevitable snark about how that’s not really  _ bad _ news. “I’m being haunted by Zuko.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Some of the magical phenomena mentioned in this chapter are inspired by stories and practices from real-life cultures. If you're curious about reading more, here are a few links that might be of interest: [yurei](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Y%C5%ABrei), [Moon Princess](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yuki-onna), [lightning in your navel](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raij%C5%AB), [curses using dolls](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ushi_no_toki_mairi), [tumor ghosts](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghosts_in_Chinese_culture), and [threads of fate.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_thread_of_fate)


	4. Chapter 4

It isn't surprising that, the second the secret’s out, Zuko makes himself as unhelpful as possible. What’s surprising is his method. He’s giving Sokka the silent treatment. Sokka didn’t know he knew what silence _was._

Unfortunately, it makes Sokka look like he’s still on cactus juice.

“I’m serious! Remember that time when I nearly fell over, in Omashu? That was totally Zuko’s evildoing!”

“No offense, Sokka,” says Toph, “but you fall over a _lot._ I wouldn’t blame that on this Zuko guy.”

“But what about all the weird things I felt in the cave?” Sokka is not referring to the thing that happened to his mouth, which probably didn’t involve Zuko and _definitely_ was not a kiss. “Remember, when we were all still together? I felt things brushing me!”

“That place was so creepy,” Katara says with a shiver. “It might’ve been something supernatural, but maybe it was just nerves.”

“But what about the _firebending?”_ Sokka exclaims, wondering how he got to the point where everyone else is desperately trying to talk him out of an obvious supernatural explanation. They _really_ don’t want to believe Zuko’s magically attached to their little gang. Frankly, Sokka can’t blame them.

“...We’ve run into a lot of firebenders,” says Aang. “Maybe you’re important to them somehow. Could there be firebenders in your family, anywhere?”

“No!” Sokka screeches. “I’m from the South Pole, I don’t have firebending ‘loved ones!’”

“Well, that rules out the ghost Zuko explanation,” Katara says, crossing her arms. “Unless you think you were one of _Zuko’s_ loved ones.”

Aang and Sokka simultaneously gag.

/

They don’t believe him. Once Katara brought up the idea of Zuko loving him, even Sokka was reluctant to believe himself. Still, they decide to bring in outside help, fast as they can. And that means flying right back to General Fong.

“General,” Sokka says, striding right up to him with his boomerang held casually in one hand. “Nice to see you again.”

Fong’s eyes dart down to Boomerang, holding a trace of fear. Good. Boomerang’s got more power than people give it credit for.

Fong doesn’t mention the disaster that was their last meeting, and at Aang’s request he allows them back into the nearby temple with only a few complaints about the Avatar State grumbled under his breath. The same sage from last time rushes down the towering grand staircase to meet them. Aang efficiently explains how Sokka’s probably haunted by a powerful firebender, though he omits any guesses about exactly who’s doing the haunting.

“A ghost, you say?” The sage strokes his stringy mustache thoughtfully. “I would expect an aura of vengeance from the soul of a powerful firebender, haunting a champion of the Water Tribe during a war. Yet there is no darkness of any kind.”

“Still,” Sokka pleads, “can I get exorcised just in case?”

“Why not? In fact, you’re just in time,” he says, eyebrows jumping. “There is a cleansing ritual to erase anything or anyone stuck on you. Tomorrow, on the eleventh, a fellow sage will guide a whole crowd to be cleansed. You are all most welcome to join the ceremony. It wields powerful magic against all forms of negative energy, and has washed away every impurity ever known in this temple.”

Sokka claps his hands together. “That’s amazing news!”

/

It is not amazing news. The first part of the ritual is fasting, which means no dinner and no breakfast and not even the littlest snack. Toph excuses herself, citing the fact that the main part of the ceremony occurs in the middle of a river and she’s had enough sand for a lifetime. Katara and Aang join him in his misery, so they all stare sadly at Momo, who spends the morning gnawing his way through a tall pile of straw-peaches.

The second part of the ritual is exercise, a bunch of sacred choreography with incantations to go with it. At first Sokka feels a little silly, shaking his arms around. Then he notices his muscles flexing in time with the movements and glistening attractively, and he feels a little better.

For step 2.5, they have to strip down to their undergarments and wade into a freezing cold river.

“Hey-” Sokka’s supposed to be repeating an incantation right now, but he stops to hiss at Katara- “can you warm up the water?”

She gives him a look and slaps him with an icy wave, not stopping her chanting for a second.

He gets the message- if he wants to be free of weirdness, Zuko-related or otherwise, he’s got to do this _right._ So he shuts his mouth and walks with the rest of the crowd into a dark, creepy, thankfully non-secret tunnel. The river’s carved its way through rock, and there’s sunlight on the other side, obscured by a giant deluge of water.

Gritting his teeth, Sokka takes a deep breath and walks right into the flow of a massive waterfall.

The icy water crashes down on his shoulders, stabbing at him, bowing his back and forcing the breath right out of his lungs. He can barely get his mouth open to recite the incantation because his teeth are so busy chattering. Yet after a second, the burden becomes lighter, and he finds he can stand upright again. He says what he’s supposed to. It’s a bunch of ancient syllables that he doesn’t understand, yet their meaning creeps into his heart anyhow. For a moment, he manages to open his eyes, and the sunlight filtering through the rushing waters looks soft and silver like moonlight.

He forgets all about Zuko and ghosts for a second and thinks simply of Yue. The sage calls, signaling that they can all step out when they’re ready, but Sokka stays, and lets his own worries go, like they might simply flow away with the rest of the waterfall.

He does feel clean when he leaves, eyes pressed shut. Though it might just be the sudden lack of water crashing on his head, he feels impossibly light, too.

When he opens his eyes again, he sees a fine mist in the air, rising from where the waterfall meets the river. And where the sun meets the water vapor, there shines a never-ending rainbow.

/

Refreshed and purified, they return to the temple by Fong’s base. The sage greets them, beaming and declaring that all four of them have clearly been made new by the ritual. It’s a less-than-comforting remark, seeing how Toph didn’t participate. 

“It was a powerful experience, yes?”

Sokka, Aang and Katara nod vigorously. Toph shrugs.

“If there was a ghost clinging to you, it will almost certainly have been washed to the next world. But as you travel with the Avatar, we should exercise extra caution.” The sage brings forth a fancy golden tray. “Here, we shall lay out offerings to draw out this honored ghost if it is still with you. Do you have any inkling what they might have liked, in life?”

“This _honored_ ghost?” Sokka deapdans. He can’t stop himself.

Aang chuckles. But then Sokka leans forward, brow creased, chin on his fist, and thinks as hard as he can. It’s difficult work, imagining that Zuko had enough happiness in him to like _anything,_ and Katara and Aang seem similarly perplexed.

Then Aang shoots to his feet, raising one finger. “I know. Fire!”

The sage lifts one eyebrow in judgment, but he does fetch a torch burning on the wall, put it in a jar to keep it upright and stick the jar on the tray. “Any other ideas?”

“Swords?” Sokka says, remembering what Aang said about Zuko and his multiple swords.

The sage frowns. “Powerful firebenders look down on such things. They consider it dishonorable, if they have to resort to any weapon but flame.”

Huh. Maybe Zuko thought he’d lost his honor so completely that swords were fair game. On the other hand, no matter how much he shrieked about being dishonored, he still carried himself around like the loudest, proudest prince Sokka can imagine. On the other other hand, to achieve the level of proficiency Aang described, he’d have needed years of fencing practice. 

It doesn’t add up.

“I don’t know what he- they liked,” Sokka adds after an uncomfortable silence. “Honor? Freshly bottled baby tears? The Avatar trussed up in chains?”

The sage lets out a long exhale. “Perhaps the best we can offer is a chance to express themselves, if they are still present.”

He snaps his fingers, and an acolyte rushes forth with writing implements and a small portable table. She sets up a little writing desk for Sokka, spreading an empty sheet of paper in front of him.

“So what now?” Sokka says. “We wait for ink to appear on the paper? Knowing Zu- what Fire Nation people are like, they’re more likely to start screaming-”

He screams a little as something grips his hand. Something like a hand, even though there’s definitely nothing there but thin air, firmly guiding him towards the brush. Sokka shakes his hand, and it lets go for a second as he dips the brush in ink himself and gets ready to write. The hand comes back and closes around Sokka’s, a weird pressure that’s neither hot nor cold but decidedly there. Then it begins to pull Sokka’s hand around like he’s a puppet on a string, pressing the brush onto paper. Characters start to appear, objectively messy but still strictly neater than Sokka’s usual scrawl…

_“Try the exorcism again.”_

Sokka reads that aloud, and the room goes silent.

Aang- bridge to the Spirit World and all that- is the first to come to his senses. He plants his staff on the ground and demands, “Who are you?”

For a second, nothing happens.

Then, though he’s not purposefully moving it even a little bit, Sokka’s hand starts writing. And writing. And writing. Once the first couple characters appear, Sokka’s heart threatens to stop.

When his hand pauses, he reads: _“Zuko. Son of Ursa and Fire Lord Ozai. Prince of the Fire Nation, and former heir to the throne.”_

The sage’s eyes bug out. Aang facepalms. Katara groans the way Sokka would, normally.

For his part, Sokka just lets out a breath he didn’t know he was holding and looks around. “Is Zuko’s mom ‘Ursa’? Because I definitely didn’t know that.”

“Yeah,” Toph replies. “I don’t know what happened to her, but Ozai definitely had a wife named Ursa at one point.”

“Well, lots of people would know that, right?” Katara says cautiously. “How do we know this isn’t just an imposter?”

“Yeah.” Sokka grabs onto this last possibility. “Okay, say something that Aang or Katara would know, but I wouldn’t. Which might be difficult, ‘cause we’re together all the time, but-”

Hopefully-Not-But-Probably-Zuko grabs his hand again. Sokka’s heart keeps threatening to break out of its rib cage every time that happens. He watches the characters forming with an increasingly deep scowl. 

“You...are an imposter,” he concludes. “And not a good one. And you’re sick in the head.”

“Why?” Aang’s eyes go wide. “What’d he say?”

Sokka strongly considers setting the entire paper on fire so the children in the room never have to know about this, but he relents. “It says, _'A_ _ang broke into my bedroom, attacked me, and repeatedly pounded me into my own mattress.’”_

“What?” Aang immediately protests. “That’s not true!” Sokka nearly thanks the spirits. Then Aang adds, “I only did it twice!”

Sokka’s hand starts scribbling furiously: _“You bound me with my own wall hangings-”_

“Yeah, but you started it,” Aang retorts, snapping at Sokka even though he’s just the messenger here. “You were waiting for me in your bedroom, and you ordered all your guys to tie _me_ up first!”

Katara and the sage look between Aang and the scroll, scandalized. 

Toph exclaims, “Do you two _know_ what this sounds like?”

“Yes,” Sokka squeaks.

“I meant Aang and Zuko!”

Zuko’s dead right now. Sokka’s considering joining him out of sheer embarrassment.

“This...really happened?” he ekes out.

“Yeah. It was really explosive, we wrecked Zuko’s entire bedroom.”

Sokka means to splutter incoherently for a bit, but he’s cut off when his hand gets yanked back to the scroll. Obediently, he reads the message aloud: _“You messed up the incantation when you went into the river. Do it again.”_

Sokka rolls his eyes. “Great, so you’re a tattle-tale too?”

Katara’s got the funniest look on her face, like she’s been judging Sokka for the exact same reason but doesn’t want to agree with Zuko.

“You messed up the incantation?” Toph squawks, right as Aang says, “Wait. Zuko. Do you...actually _want_ to be exorcised?”

 _“Obviously,”_ writes Zuko.

Sokka scoffs. “Why? This is the closest you’ve ever gotten to Aang, which means it’s the closest you’ve gotten to your honor.” Zuko grabs his hand again with frankly unnecessary force, and Sokka leans in close to see what he’s writing. “Oh look, Zuko says, ‘It is indeed my dream to chase Aang around the world because I’m an irredeemable jerk with the worst taste in hair and- ow!”

Zuko twists his hand around. It makes the high points on his palms turn butter-yellow, just on this side of pain, until Sokka drops the brush and yanks his hand away again.

“Both of you-” Toph stomps one foot and shakes the whole room- “knock it off!”

Sokka obeys. Remarkably, Zuko does too. For one blessed moment, there’s peace.

“Zuko,” Katara says, addressing the space above Sokka’s head with a glare, “how’d you...end up like this?”

 _“It’s obvious.”_

Sokka deadpans Zuko’s words before giving his own, animated response. “Hey, we wouldn’t be asking if it was obvious.” 

There’s another moment of stillness before Zuko takes his hand again, like he needed time to compose himself. 

_“I must have been exiled from the afterlife-”_ Sokka reads that part in singsong, but then his enthusiasm peters out- _“being found unworthy of a proper death.”_

Zuko’s grip feels firm, his brushstrokes confident, like he’s certain it’s the truth. Still, Sokka has his doubts. The books said you needed a confluence of specific factors to become a ghost- it wasn’t just a matter of “worth.” It can’t be a matter of worth. Fire Lord Sozin must be the least worthy person in history, having slaughtered the Air Nomads, but nobody’s ever accused _him_ of becoming a ghost.

“I don’t think it works like that,” Sokka says hesitantly. “This is...bad luck. The worst luck ever for everyone involved, but I don’t think you became a ghost because you’re _unworthy_ of death. You totally deserve to die!”

That sounded mean, didn’t it.

After a weird pause, Zuko takes up the brush again. _“But I died without capturing_ ~~_the Avat_~~ _Aang.”_

He pauses mid-character when he’s writing “Avatar,” before scratching it out and writing Aang’s name instead.

“Somehow,” Sokka says dryly, “I doubt the afterlife’s _mad_ that you let the Avatar live.”

“How’d you die in the first place?” Toph says casually, somehow taking all this in stride.

Zuko’s grip on Sokka’s hand tightens. _“I don’t exactly know.”_

He presses down too hard, ruining the brush’s pretty bristles. Sokka glares, but he has no idea _where_ to glare, which ruins the effect.

“If I may,” the sage interrupts, “exactly what mistake did you make, with the ritual incantation?”

Sokka winces. With his luck, he changed the syntax and accidentally cursed himself to a lifetime of misfortune.

“I just paused to talk to Katara, right when we got in the water,” he says, feeling a little defensive. “It was just a couple seconds, and we weren’t even in the cave yet.”

“Nothing else?”

“...I stayed under the water longer than everyone else?”

“Hmph.” The sage wrinkles his brow in deep thought. “No, no, that wouldn’t do it.”

“Do what?” Aang says with obvious nerves.

“A misstep that slight wouldn’t disturb the whole ritual. The force of the waters should still have been sufficient to remove all but the most obstinate hangers-on. I’m afraid...this presence must be one of the most dogged, strong-willed souls to ever live.”

Zuko roughly dunks the brush back in the well and starts writing, dripping ink all over in the process. _“But I want to leave.”_

Sokka snorts, tacking on, “No worries, the feeling’s mutual.” 

Zuko keeps writing: _“Do whatever it takes to get rid of me. Try every exorcism. Any pain necessary-”_

Toph cuts into Sokka’s reading: “If you don’t want to haunt Sokka, why haven’t you just killed him off?”

Oh. Yeah. That’s a good question. Zuko’s clearly capable of injuring him, and Sokka has no way to fight back. Yet Zuko’s been saving him instead. From his sister’s blue fire, yes, but also from falling off Appa while high on cactus juice. Maybe even before that. For one weird moment Sokka thinks about something or someone tapping his hand, guiding him as he broke that lock near Omashu...

_“I might end up somewhere even worse afterwards.”_

Sokka’s brief pleasant feelings instantly dissolve. 

“That’s why you haven’t murdered me?” he protests. “Gee, thanks. What ever happened to, I don’t know, _basic respect for human life?”_

There’s one more moment of silence. It stretches, and stretches, and Sokka starts to wonder if the exorcism just had a delayed effect.

Then the torch on the tray blasts a massive fireball up at the ceiling. At the same time, a fist clenches around Sokka’s ponytail and _twists,_ pushing him forward and dunking _his entire face in the inkwell._ Sokka rocks back with a sputter. He pants and bats his hands at empty air and blinks his eyes rapidly, trying to clear away the ink on his lashes, even while screeching, “Bad ghost! _Bad ghost!”_

Katara splashes his face with a little more force than usual, like she’s mad at Zuko but Sokka’s the only target available right now. 

“You got what you wanted,” she spits, not at Sokka but at the general space around him, “I am going to exorcise you _if it kills me.”_

Sokka wipes his face with his shirt and braces for the next round of ghostly tantruming. Yet it never comes. Even when Aang tries to ask another question and the sage puts another torch out on the tray, Zuko refuses to write anything more. He’s back to the silent treatment.

It’s a definite improvement.

/

The sage brings them into the temple library after that. He doesn’t have encyclopedias on ghosts like Wan Shi Tong did, but he does have records of other temples throughout the world and their practices.

“Each nation has its own way of dealing with hauntings. The Fire Sages are always secretive about their ways, but the stories say they can enslave ghosts. This soul is already bound to yours; perhaps it could be forced to serve you.”

Katara, Sokka and Aang all share a look. Aang’s the first to break away and ask about other options.

“The Northern Water Tribe’s sages have a long history in dealing with ghosts,” the sage offers. “However, I am not certain the help they can give you is the help you want.”

Sokka tilts his head. “Why not?”

“The Water Tribe’s strength is its ability to change. When one is visited by a presence such as this one-” he inhales deeply, clearly tempted to insult this particular presence but thinking better of it- “they claim it is best to adapt to the bond. They are masters of drawing reticent ghosts into open communication. That seems unneeded- the two of you clearly have a great deal to say to each other.”

Sokka rubs his head. Zuko’s last attempt at “communication” is still stinging his roots. 

“The Air Nomads knew freedom best. They could have detached you from each other with only the slightest effort, but I am afraid that option is now impossible.” As he says it, the room’s torches grow a little dimmer, though Sokka chalks that up to a breeze. “To separate from this ghost, you ought to stay within the Earth Kingdom. The most powerful exorcist alive is the Head Sage of Ba Sing Se; he will surely save you if you can meet him. But as he is busy attending to other spiritual affairs of this nation-” he reaches behind a stone table and into a surprisingly mundane filing cabinet, fishing out two slips of paper- “you may wish to consult these local devotees of the supernatural. They are more likely to offer prompt assistance.”

Sokka takes one slip and beams. “The nuns Bato stayed with! That’s great, I’m sure they’ll help.”

“And otherwise…” Katara brandishes the second slip with a low-key evil grin, like the sort of grin Zuko might have once given them if his mouth muscles were capable of smiling. “We have to go see Aunt Wu.”

/

Aunt Wu is on the way to the nuns.

 _Of course_ Aunt Wu’s on the way to the nuns.

It’s just a matter of efficiency, everyone tells Sokka (except Zuko, who’s still remaining spitefully, mercifully silent). They leave the sage, who promises to be discreet about the whole situation, so now they have to visit the other two spiritual experts who might be of assistance. And while making their visits, they shouldn’t waste time by doubling back, just because Sokka might be nursing a bit of a grudge against the closest stop.

(It’s a giant grudge, for the record. A grudge as large as the volcano that nearly exploded on them, thanks to Aunt Wu and her brilliant prophecies.)

Sokka sits on Appa’s back with his arms crossed, sulking and not talking to anyone else. It occurs to him that he’s matching Zuko’s behavior right now. He dismisses that as an unlucky coincidence.

Something brushes his hand, feather-light.

Sokka narrows his eyes, but he lets his hand be guided over to a pen and his current journal. This time he just reads the message without repeating it out loud.

_“I sincerely apologize for attacking you earlier today. It was foolish and wrong of me.”_

First thing Sokka notices is the “earlier today,” which was definitely on-purpose phrasing to indicate that he’s not sorry about the whole chasing-the-Avatar thing. Second thing Sokka notices is that Zuko _apologized._

“Katara,” he whispers. “Zuko said sorry for today.”

She scoffs, like she doesn’t believe Zuko as far as she can throw him, which is “not at all” given the whole intangible-ghost issue. Yet against his better judgment, Sokka trusts this apology. Maybe because Zuko’s had plenty of ways to non-lethally attack him, and hair-pulling with a side of ink-splashing falls on the nice part of the spectrum. 

(Maybe because Zuko’s phantom hand held his so softly while tracing out the words, with a gentleness he didn’t know a Fire Nation prince could possess.)

/

“It is difficult reading the palm of someone who isn’t physically here, but that is why I’ve completed both your horoscopes instead,” Aunt Wu declares in her theatrical little back room. “From these I can perceive both your futures. You may let go of all your worries, now that you are in my care.”

“Thanks, Aunt Wu,” Sokka says through gritted teeth. “There’s really no one who affects my stress level like you.”

He’s got a pen in his hand, plus a clean sheet of paper. So far, Zuko’s stayed quiet.

Aang asks the big question: “How do we separate Zuko and Sokka?”

She lights a stick of incense for no apparent reason except to up the suspense. Or maybe she’s counting on the smog to addle their minds, so they’ll temporarily think she makes sense. “It is an unusual bond you have, and I admit the particulars of a ghost’s magic escape me. But one thing is clear from reading your horoscopes.”

Sokka leans forward, drawn in against his will.

“The two of you were made to marry each other.”

 _“What?”_ is the cry that comes up from every human in the room. Momo yelps a nonverbal protest. 

“I have never come across two souls more perfectly matched in temperament, tastes, values-”

“Never in a million years,” Sokka squawks, not even thinking about the way his hand goes scrawling. When he reads the paper, it says: _“Never in a million years.”_

Sokka stabs the scroll with his finger. “This is the _only_ thing we have in common.”

“And you are right! There might not be another couple as well-suited as you, even in a million years.” Unruffled, Aunt Wu holds up a couple charts covered in astrological gibberish. “As you can see from the position of the moon during both of your birth times, you display remarkable compatibility in every respect. Emotional, spiritual, physical-”

“He’s _dead!”_

“Intimacy takes many forms,” Aunt Wu says, utterly serene. “And it is not my place to judge. From what I see, you have already shared your first kiss, not too long ago.”

“Of course he didn’t,” Katara snaps, practically vibrating with indignation. “Right?”

“Right,” Sokka says, his voice jumping an octave.

Toph snorts. “Liar.”

“...I was really hoping it was a wolf-bat,” Sokka admits, dropping his head and pinching the bridge of his nose to stave off a looming headache. “And in my defense, we were in the cursed labyrinth, and it was either him or a corpse!”

“Whatever turns you on,” Toph remarks.

Everyone else is gaping at him. To escape their scrutiny, Sokka does the unthinkable and willingly engages with Aunt Wu’s predictions.

“Okay, so let’s say Zuko and I are...theoretically compatible.” He forces the word out of his throat. “Why does that matter? I can’t exactly marry a dead guy.”

“Actually,” Aang says quietly, “I’ve been to a ghost wedding, before. See, Bumi’s Aunt Sona was engaged, and there was an accident that killed the girl she loved. But Sona still went through with a wedding. That way their families could be bound together, and maybe her fiancée would be more at peace, and they’d be remembered forever for their love.”

“Ghost marriage is an old-fashioned tradition, increasingly rare these days,” Aunt Wu adds. “And by convention, there isn’t a literal ghost present. Still, the stars do say you will be nothing if not an unconventional couple.”

“Yeah, but you’re missing something here,” Sokka protests. “The stars can say whatever they want, but I have _no reason_ to marry Prince Shout-a-lot-”

“According to the stars,” she breaks in smoothly, “he will reach a peaceful death if, and _only if,_ you marry.”

“You. You think. Are you.” Sokka’s brain fails several attempts at sentences, and eventually he slumps backwards onto the floor. Maybe if they mistake him for dead, everyone will kindly forget this.

Thankfully, his baby sister produces rants even when he can’t. 

“That is absolutely _ridiculous,”_ she fumes. “I have so much respect for you, Aunt Wu, but with all due respect there is _no world_ in which Sokka is going to marry Zuko. He attacked our village, and he’s hounded us all around the world, and he’s prince of the Fire Nation. They took our mother from us!”

Katara’s voice wobbles, and Sokka’s hand twitches towards his pen. He staunchly refuses to move; he’s not interested in hearing Zuko insult his mother or worse, make _excuses._

“But,” Aang says cautiously, “would it do any harm?” Katara twists around for a new round of invective, but he puts up two hands in self-defense. “I know! I know it’s weird, and they’re not going to feel the way we’d expect two husbands to. But can’t Sokka just keep living his life afterwards? He'll be like a widower; he can still marry someone else who’s alive, right? Nobody needs to know.”

From his place on the floor, Sokka facepalms. “What would Zuko even gain from marrying me? How does that help _anything?”_

“Well,” Toph mutters, eyes cast slyly down, “probably helps that giant crush he has on you.”

The room erupts into shrieking again. Sokka even lets Zuko pull his hand toward the pen, almost popping his elbow out of place in his haste to write, _“I have_ _never_ _wanted a romance with Sokka.”_

Toph frowns. “I can’t prove he’s lying, but according to what you said about that book? Ghosts totally haunt their loved ones. So.”

“Technically-“ Sokka’s grasping desperately for alternate explanations, because the idea of Zuko cherishing mushy feelings for him makes him feel icky all over- “the book said ghosts haunt people of significance, _such as_ loved ones. But archenemies could count too.”

Aang lifts an eyebrow. “Aren’t _I_ Zuko’s archenemy?” 

“Hey, maybe he had a healthy fear of Boomerang!” At that second, Zuko steals Sokka’s attention by writing a new message, pressing the pen so hard it breaks through the paper a few times. “Huh. He says, _I can’t see how marriage helps either, except with funeral rites.”_

Sokka lifts the pen for a moment. “That’s part of ghostliness, isn’t it? You didn’t get the right funeral?”

In response, Zuko writes: _“In the simplest form of a Fire Nation funeral, one of your closest family members should hold a candlelight vigil for you right after you die, but Azula seemed to think I was alive.”_

Sokka narrows his eyes at the unusual name. “Is Azula the scary one?”

_“My sister, yes.”_

Sokka groans. “Can’t someone else marry you? Does it have to be _me?”_

“It must be you,” Aunt Wu says. “The star charts are clear on this matter.”

“More practically-“ Toph interrupts Sokka’s stammering about where Aunt Wu can stick her charts- “you just turned sixteen right? It’s not legal for the rest of us, and I feel like we shouldn’t bring extra people into this if we don’t have to.”

“Ugh…” Sokka’s crowed about being the oldest many times in his life, and he takes all his boasting back. “Is there _any_ advantage here? Can I get a nice dowry from the Fire Nation treasury, you know, as compensation for marrying this headache?”

 _“You’d get the Fire Nation crown-“_ Zuko starts writing again, and for one brief second Sokka boils over with both plans and joy- _“if all royals, ministers, generals and admirals were dead. Or if you beat the Fire Lord in an Agni Kai.”_

Everyone rolls their eyes. 

“Real helpful, buddy.” Sokka dramatically throws down the pen and puts his head in his hands and tries to think about this logically. It’s a blow to his pride, marrying Zuko, and the thought of associating himself in any way with Fire Nation royalty roils his stomach in a very interesting way. On the other hand, there’s little practical downside, and Sokka is nothing if not practical.

“You all need to promise you’ll _never tell anyone_ about this,” Sokka finally says.

 _“Please don’t,”_ Zuko adds. _“My name is hardly honored as it is, but this would still go down as an eternal mark of shame.”_

“What a romantic,” Sokka mutters. “Whatever. I’ll marry Zuko, so I _never_ have to deal with him again.”

Aang nods seriously. “How about you, Zuko?”

_“I feel exactly the same as Sokka.”_

/

They leave Aunt Wu for the abbey up north, hoping the nuns can suggest a better option than marriage. 

“I am afraid the best advice I can offer-“ the abbess has pity in her eyes, and it intensifies when they disclose exactly _who’s_ latched onto Sokka- “is to hold a funeral in the style of the Fire Nation, fit for one of their princes. And without the full cooperation of his nation, the only such rite would indeed be a candlelight vigil held by a close family member. A parent, child, sibling...or a spouse.”

Sokka groans. “Fine. Great. So how do I actually _marry_ a ghost?”

Turns out that’s the simple part. Though these nuns haven’t conducted a ghost marriage before, their library holds records of several prior weddings in both the Fire Nation and the Earth Kingdom where one or both parties were dead. None of those records claimed the ghost was actively around, haunting the ceremony. Sokka considers this a plus- if he had to actually go through a full marriage ceremony with Zuko, invisible or not, he would spontaneously combust. Instead, they need to find a proxy to physically stand in for Zuko.

“I vote for the effigy,” Sokka says. “Can we please have an effigy? That way we get to burn it at the end!”

“And as fun as that sounds,” Katara replies, doing her best to placate him, “most of these weddings had live proxies. We should do that too, to be safe.”

So Sokka doesn’t get a fun effigy to burn. It’s his wedding and he doesn’t get anything he wants, and he keeps up a steady stream of grumbling under his breath. Sure, he’s thankful to the nuns, who are going along with this farce with surprising grace. He’s grateful they’re decorating the abbey’s main hall. He’s glad they’re preparing a wedding dinner.

“But _spirits-dammit,”_ he mutters, “aren’t weddings supposed to have _meat?_ Even if there’s a vegetarian Avatar in the wedding party?”

Zuko pokes his hand, and Sokka flips to a new page in his notebook with a sigh. _“You have to make them redo all the flowers. They’re using camellia and cactus flowers.”_

“What’s wrong with that?”

_“In Fire Nation flower language, the camellia arguably refers to a graceful death, but it mainly says we’re in love. And cactus flowers are a sign of”_

The pen pauses, and Sokka raises an eyebrow. “Can’t guess if you don’t tell me.”

_“It’s a sign of something spouses ordinarily do but we never, ever will!”_

“What- oh.” Sokka’s cheeks heat up. “Well, I happen to _like_ cactus.”

_“A cactus made you tell everyone my soul was full of balls.”_

“Of fire! Like the book said! Nothing wrong with that!”

Katara drags him away to have his outfit tailored. It’s a suit of scratchy, mothball-scented brocade that the nuns dragged out of some dusty cabinet, made of awful bright red that makes Sokka’s eyes hurt. This is a fact that he complains about repeatedly. Toph hangs around in the corner as Katara makes her measurements- not like she’ll get an inappropriate eyeful.

(Zuko will definitely get an inappropriate eyeful, but if he’s been following Sokka around for weeks- through multiple baths- he won’t see anything new. Sokka’s decided to skip panicking about that. He’s got too many other freakouts that take precedence right now. Anyway, given the state of his muscles? He’s got nothing to be embarrassed about.)

While Katara sticks pins in the pants, Sokka’s hand is pulled towards the pen.

“If you dare joke about how she has to make the front smaller-“ He cuts off his threat early, before he has to figure out how you even threaten someone who’s already dead, and reads what Zuko’s written. “Oh, never mind. Zuko’s writing to you.”

Kneeling with a handful of needles, Katara shoots him a poison-sweet smile. “And what does His Highness want me to know?”

“He objects to the proxy costume,” Sokka informs her, “because it’s inappropriate to dress his stand-in in just a skirt.”

Her smile morphs into a baleful scowl. “Do you know how long it takes, even sewing one seam? Do you have _any idea_ how difficult a _shirt_ or a _full robe_ would be? You’re lucky I’m not sending him in totally naked!”

Amused, Sokka decides to wind her up further, so he rephrases the rest of Zuko’s notes more pretentiously and delivers them with his most princely and pompous accent: “He’d also like to register an objection because the dragon you sewed on more closely resembles a fireworm-“

“Ugh!” She stabs a needle into Sokka’s pants, a little too close for comfort.

Sokka bravely carries on: “Furthermore, if he had lived long enough to be wedded, he would wear nothing atop his head but a deeply pretentious- I mean _'honorable'-_ top-knot. He therefore most strenuously protests the placing of a silken veil over his proxy’s pate-“

“The nuns gave us this cloth, and I’m not about to waste it. Anyway,” she snaps, _“Zuko_ should thank me for the veil, because if he actually lived long enough to be here nobody would want to see his face!”

“Burn,” Toph jokes from the sidelines.

Toph probably doesn’t notice the pun. Unfortunately, Sokka does.

“They didn’t mean it like that?” he says hesitantly. It might be a lie- Katara absolutely might’ve meant it like that- but it does feel a little low, even for Zuko. “We object to your face because you’re a nasty Fire Nation prince, not because...yeah.”

After a long moment, Zuko writes again.

_“I feel so much better now.”_

Sokka squints at that. “Was that...was that sarcasm? Do you have a sense of _humor?”_

_“Of course I do.”_

After a long internal battle, Sokka allows himself the littlest chuckle.

/

In a ghost marriage, proxies aren’t supposed to be living people. Since Sokka’s been denied his effigy fun, he’ll have to instead marry an animal. Traditionally, it’d be a white bird.

In his case, it’s a flying lemur.

According to the nuns, Fire Nation fiancés are supposed to cry as they’re led to their weddings. Momo follows that tradition exquisitely. He whines, kicking at his bright red skirt and tugging at the veil somehow bound with string around his ears. Aang’s carrying him up to Sokka, and he really tries to step slowly and solemnly down the walkway they’ve cleared out for this, but as Momo’s fussing gets louder he starts moving faster, completing the procession at a brisk jog. Toph keeps snorting, and Katara’s hiding a smile, and Sokka is outright cackling.

By the time Aang presents the proxy-bridegroom, he’s hissing and screeching.

“Wow,” Sokka says, “he’s really gotten into character, huh, Zuko?”

Zuko pulls on his ponytail in protest- lightly, expressing displeasure without inflicting any real hurt. Sokka whines dramatically anyway, which is when Momo seizes his chance to escape. He spreads his wings, leaps out of Aang’s arms and arcs right over their heads, a little ball of white-hot energy with a train of silk trailing behind him. Sokka only catches him by grabbing his tail.

The abbess overseeing the “ceremony” takes a moment to compose herself.

“We will begin the traditional Fire Nation rites. Please kneel for the first time, to honor the spirits.”

The nuns claim only Sokka needs to do this part, but they can’t be sure, since the texts aren’t terribly clear about the requirements for either ghosts or lemurs. Zuko might be kneeling beside Sokka, if he cares enough to.

(And just in case, Aang folds back Momo’s veil and sticks a shallow plate of puréed moon peaches on the ground. Momo promptly jumps down, gets on his hands and knees, and shoves his face down into the plate, mirroring Sokka’s posture perfectly.)

“I honor the spirits,” Sokka murmurs, “by hoping my past actions have pleased them and that this marriage is in accordance with their will.” 

His throat threatens to close up for a second, but no, the moon doesn’t strike him down on the spot. He’d almost wished she would.

He rises. Momo stays kneeling, still up to his ears in peaches.

“Kneel for a second time, to honor your ancestors and those of your betrothed.”

Sokka goes down again, forehead almost touching the ground. “I honor my ancestors, both living and deceased, by thanking them for their wisdom and their sacrifices, and by seeking peace and freedom for our tribe. I honor the deceased ancestors of the one beside me, by dedicating that second bowl of moon peaches Aang’s hiding under his robes to their lemur spirits-“

As if he can understand him, Momo suddenly pounces on Aang, clawing his way towards the food. Simultaneously, the abbess launches a protest, and Zuko prods Sokka’s hand.

“Do I _seriously_ have to say nice things about _Sozin?”_ Sokka says, ignoring Zuko and appealing to the abbess. “You get how ridiculous that is, right?” Zuko jabs him again, more forcefully. _“Fine,_ what do you want?” Sokka unhooks the pen he’s taken to sticking in his belt and pulls out a notebook. “That’s...not a terrible idea.”

Zuko’s written, _“Just say something nice that’s true about everybody.”_

“I honor Zuko’s ancestors, both living and diseased-“ that gets him a poke in the back- “I mean, _‘deceased,’_ by hoping that the dead ones stay peacefully dead, as opposed to, ya know, coming back to haunt us. I hope they’re all remembered for ages, and really, really accurately. And I hope Ozai gets all the good things he deserves.”

He pours as much sarcasm as he can manage into the word “good.”

Though Katara, Toph and Aang are snickering in the background, Zuko doesn’t register any new objections as Sokka rises to face the abbess again.

She’s got a smile playing at the corners of her lips. Still, her voice is serious when she says, “Kneel for a third time, to honor your betrothed.”

So Sokka drops down obediently.

“I honor Zuko-“ he presses down the urge to laugh hysterically at that- “by marrying him so he can achieve the peace he’s looking for...” He was going to leave it at that, but as marriage vows go it does seem a little too spare. “And promising to treat him at least as well as he treats me?”

He trails off, feeling suddenly inadequate. Then something brushes his hand where it’s pressed to the ground, pushing underneath and then _around._

Oh.

Zuko’s holding his hand. It’s not the first time- their hands have touched plenty of times, but for once Zuko’s not inflicting pain or pulling him somewhere or making any demands. He’s just _there._

Sokka doesn’t quite know what to do with that. 

He guesses it’s an attempt to respect the wedding tradition. A half-hearted attempt to act like newlywed husbands are supposed to.

Sokka squeezes back.

/

So Sokka’s married now. The mood at the wedding feast is subdued, which Sokka blames on the fact that all five dishes are vegetarian.

“I _said_ we should’ve had meat,” he whines to himself while picking at his salad. 

Well, not just to himself.

Zuko pushes him to put down his spoon and pick up a pen. _“The biggest problem isn’t the meat, it’s the tea. I don’t even care about tea, but the smell of those burnt leaves is revolting.”_

“You can smell?” Sokka says curiously.

_“Yes. Please wash your bedroll.”_

Sokka’s brief interest sours immediately. “I’m sorry it’s not a palace like you’re used to, but when you’re traveling-“

_“I’m not used to a palace. I am perfectly well-acquainted with the hardships of traveling, but it’s no excuse to give up basic hygiene.”_

“Please,” Sokka snorts, “what does a prince know about ‘the hardships of traveling?’ _”_

_“I haven’t lived in a palace since-“_

“Hey, Sokka,” Toph calls, “we should rob a Fire Nation bank to get you a dowry.”

Zuko immediately drops whatever he was saying to launch a righteous protest: _“You have absolutely no right to demand a dowry; that’s for people who are setting up a household and a whole new life together, which is_ _obviously_ _not an issue here.”_

Toph hears out this declaration, which Sokka recites with the most Zuko-esque pout he can manage. Then she grins toothily at him. “I’m totally robbing a Fire Nation bank.”

/

The sun drops low in the sky, and the plates and flowers are cleared away. All that’s left in the hall is an unlit candle.

The abbess takes a seat opposite Sokka, with the candle between them. “Your marriage is valid, in the eyes of the law and hopefully the spirits, despite certain...liberties with the wedding. However, a proper funeral requires more honesty of feeling. A certain level of gravity and respect.”

Sokka nods, chastened. 

The abbess then looks at Katara, Toph and Aang, sitting behind Sokka in a show of support. “I understand this ghost is one you fought on the battlefield. If you fear you cannot sincerely mourn him, this is where you step away.”

Sokka glances back at the three of them. Toph and Aang seem perfectly resolute, but Katara’s looking down at her hands like she’s on the verge of saying something thoroughly unfit for the occasion.

“Hey.”

She looks back up at him, eyes shining with something unreadable. “You have to do this, so I’m staying.”

“Technically you’re his family too now,” Sokka offers. The joke doesn’t quite work.

“You must stay with the candle from dusk to dawn,” the abbess says. “Traditionally, this vigil is observed without speaking aloud, but in your mind you must remember the one who’s passed. Contemplate them- their triumphs and their follies and your time together. Reflect on the way they passed. Bid them farewell.”

“Um.” Sokka lifts his hand, feeling like an underprepared schoolchild. “What if I don’t know exactly how he died?”

The abbess tilts her head. “In most cases, I would say you should simply think on whatever you do know. However, this time the soul is present, and should be consulted.”

“Ah,” Sokka says. He tries to find some elegant way of posing the question and then gives up. “Hey, Zuko? Can you clue us in here?”

There’s a long pause, as Sokka waits with his pen. Then he reads out the answers as they come.

 _“I don’t know. I wasn’t exactly aware of my surroundings.”_

“Are there clues? Are you missing a limb or four?”

_“No. I look exactly the same way I did, last time I saw a mirror.”_

“Do you feel poisoned?”

_“No. I only feel cold.”_

“What’s the last thing you remember for sure?”

_“The three of you.”_

Sokka squints. “That doesn’t make sense. You were fine, last time we saw you. Katara dumped some snow on your head to knock you out, but she didn’t do anything lethal.”

_“What happened after that?”_

He shrugs. “I don’t know. We left you there.”

“Where’s ‘there’?” Toph says.

“Outside at the North Pole,” Sokka answers.

“So,” she says, sounding uncharacteristically cautious, “you left a firebender unconscious in a pile of snow?”

Sokka goes cold all over, though he doesn’t know why. “Yeah? I figured he’d be immune to ice. Just melt his way out in two seconds.”

Toph’s face goes deathly pale. Slowly, she shakes her head.

“The Fire Lord reserves extreme cold,” the abbess murmurs before them, “as a final method of torture for firebenders. Or as a particularly grotesque form of execution.”

“But I-“ Sokka stammers for a second, just spouting random syllables as his brain scrambles desperately for alternate explanations. “I said to leave him, sure, but we weren’t _torturing_ him. We don’t torture anybody! He was all bundled up in armor and he was fighting tooth and nail two seconds before that, and he had an entire army to back him up, you think he was alone? Please! He was _fine-“_

“Sunset,” the abbess says sharply. She cuts Sokka off once and for all, striking a match and lighting the candle. Sokka glances at the window with sudden desperation, only to find the world’s gone dark when he wasn’t looking.

He has to be silent now. He has to, for the vigil. He sits before the candle and looks into the guttering flame, too stunned to think of anything but a name.

Zuko.

Zuko.

How could Zuko-

See, Sokka’s got all the facts, laid out before him. He’s always been good with facing facts. He’s nothing if not practical and grounded in reality.

But this can’t be right.

The ghost he saw, during his flirtation with cactus juice, looked just like Zuko had the last time they saw him. The same half-healed bruises on his face- no extras. All four limbs intact. The same specialized armor he wore at the North Pole. Throw in the fact that his family’s convinced he’s still alive, and there’s no evidence Zuko ever made it out of the battle. No sign he sustained new injuries after their last clash. No reason for him to be dead but that he froze to death, buried deep in an unremarkable snowbank.

The snowbank where they’d left him.

The snowbank where Sokka _said_ to leave him.

His breath catches. The facts and the theories click together in his brain, in that lightning-strike of enlightenment that only chills him to the bone, because it all makes perfect, terrible sense. He knows why Zuko’s bound to haunt _him,_ of all people- not Aang, not a loved one, just _him._ The guy who personally sealed his not-so-metaphorical coffin. And he knows how Zuko came by the “grotesque death” the book said every ghost needed, with the “deeply personal misery” sprinkled on top.

They- he- froze the adolescent Prince of the Fire Nation to death.

_Spirits._

Behind him, there are no words, just a quiet snuffling as Aang starts to cry. Then there’s some rustling- probably Katara reaching to hug him.

Sokka can’t look away from the tiny, flickering flame.

He doesn’t cry. He feels like he’s been whacked on the head by Boomerang, so the world seems strange and hazy and less than real.

He can’t cry. Maybe he should, but he’s not like Aang or Katara. They’re alike, the two of them, with boundless wells of compassion and finely tuned senses of justice that keep them eager to solve every sob story they hear. Which isn’t to say Sokka’s cold, or hard- he helps out with every harebrained save-the-world scheme, and he keeps the bulk of his cynicsm to himself. His altruism’s not all an act. He does care about the downtrodden people they meet, at least in a brainy, intellectual way.

Somewhere behind him, Katara’s begun weeping with Aang. She’s noisier, with sharp, stabbing breaths. She sounds angry.

Sokka’s just built differently from them. The war’s made him pragmatic. Or old. Or numb. Difficult telling the difference, nowadays. Still, he certainly didn’t commit cold-blooded murder here- he winces, noting the unintended pun- and he didn’t set out with the intent to end Zuko’s life. He was just doing what he needed to do to protect his friends and his family and also the entire world. Intentional killing wasn’t part of it.

Of course, that didn’t matter in the end, did it? Not for Zuko.

If Sokka’s honest, it doesn’t seem wholly real that Prince Zuko’s dead. Zuko never even seemed _killable._ How could he? He was like one of those Fire Nation tanks, the ones that couldn’t be broken, because even if you flipped them upside down or knocked them off a cliff they’d somehow right themselves and keep shooting. He was less human than wildfire. Hungry. Mercurial. Impossible for one man to take down. And sure, Sokka’s laughed at him. He’s poked fun at his haircut and his obsession with honor. The humor’s never let him forget how, the first time they met with ashen snow filling the air, Zuko was a monster made for his nightmares. 

(A breeze wafts through the window, and the candle’s flame falls sideways, threatening to go out. On instinct, he lifts one hand to shield it.)

Sokka cares. He poured all his caring out for the labyrinth- and Zuko- to see. He cares about Katara and Dad and everyone from their village, and Aang and Toph now. And Yue. Spirits, it’d be easier if he cared less. But there’s a war on, and the world’s on fire, and there’s a limit to how many people Sokka can let into his heart.

Princes of the Fire Nation- even those tragically lost at war- can’t possibly fit.

Past midnight, Sokka gives up the big questions for unimportant trivia. Zuko’s “just a teenager,” as Aang put it, and his views on flower symbolism are as passionate as his opinions on honor. He’s a teenager, and the last person to kiss Sokka, even if it was just to stop him from kissing a literal corpse instead. Sokka hopes it was Zuko’s first kiss. That’d explain how he miscalculated badly enough to split Sokka’s lip.

Sokka chuckles, though he doesn’t mean to. He’s surprised to find there’s no malice in it.

These are unimportant trivia. Yet as they reach those surreal hours just before dawn, when Toph starts snoring and everything else stops making sense, Sokka thinks the trivia might be all that matters.

Even later than that, Aang and Katara fall asleep, leaning against each other. Toph’s using Katara’s knee as a pillow. The hall’s other torches go out, and the candle steadily burns lower and lower. Sokka begins to wonder if the night will ever end.

The candle holds out until sunrise. Aang stirs first, and then Katara and Toph wake too. Groggily, Toph asks if it’s over.

The abbess lifts the candle to her lips, preparing to blow it out, but it wisps away to smoke first. Then Sokka feels a touch on his hand, soft as a breath.

 _“I’m still here,”_ Zuko writes. _“Sorry.”_

Blame it on the sleep deprivation, but Sokka smiles.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (Update, 1/11/2021) This chapter underwent minor edits to make the discussion of Fire Nation wedding practices gender-neutral. I'd like to believe Fire Nation weddings offer a lot of flexibility and choice in that respect.
> 
> Some of the practices mentioned in this chapter are inspired by practices from real-life cultures. If you're curious about reading more, here are a few links that might be of interest: [waterfalls and purification](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Misogi), [ghost](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_ghost_marriage) [marriage](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Posthumous_marriage), and [traditional Chinese wedding practices](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traditional_Chinese_marriage).


	5. Chapter 5

They don’t speak much after that. They simply shamble half-asleep onto Appa’s back and head for Ba Sing Se to see the Head Sage.

“As long as you don’t hurt me,” Sokka mutters to himself. “I’ll keep trying to help you move on.”

Traveling with the Avatar means your life stops making sense. Trying to stay on civil speaking terms with Prince Zuko- who’s now Sokka’s newlywed husband, though they’ve all decided not to mention that particular fact, and who is also dead- isn’t that much weirder than falling half-in-love with the moon. It’s _less_ weird than getting a faceful of Princess Azula’s bright-blue flame and living to tell the tale.

Sokka ought to say something more, but the words don’t come. After a moment, there’s a firm squeeze around his hand.

/

 _“There are things you should know about Ba Sing Se before you land,”_ Zuko writes as the walls come into view. _“It’s the most dangerous place in the world.”_

Sokka raises an eyebrow. “I really doubt that. We’re from the South Pole, where the weather regularly tries to kill us, and you’re from the Fire Nation, which regularly tries to kill _everyone.”_

 _“I know you don’t approve of the Fire Nation-“_ Sokka snorts at the understatement of the century, yet Zuko keeps going- _“but Ba Sing Se is_ _really_ _oppressive.”_

“Uh-huh,” Sokka says dryly, after informing everyone else about Zuko’s warning. “And what does the Prince of the Fire Nation have to say about oppression?”

_“They banned firebending-“_

“You mean like the Fire Nation colonies banned earthbending?” Katara challenges.

_“And everything their rulers say is propaganda.”_

“As opposed to the Fire Nation’s memos, which are totally true and unbiased,” deadpans Sokka.

 _“But there’s no freedom of speech at all. It’s not just important people who have to be careful,_ everyone _has to avoid the banned topics. There’s a massive secret police of earthbenders who sneak onto roofs and into walls to listen to everyone. The laws change all the time, and nobody knows who makes up the rules or why. And if the people at the top don’t like you, they can just suck you underground on the open street, even if there’s no charge against you. And I heard they’ve figured out mind control-“_

“Hold up,” Toph says. “I know Ba Sing Se’s bad, but _mind control?_ Where’d you get this?”

_“My uncle.”_

“Your uncle, who tried to invade Ba Sing Se?”

_“Yes, that’s why he tried so hard.”_

As Katara huffs, Sokka bursts out laughing. “I’ve heard some pretty bad propaganda, but the Fire Nation really outdid itself on that one.”

 _“What do you mean?”_ Zuko demands, botching half the characters in his haste.

“I mean, your uncle was either totally hoodwinked by someone higher up…”

“Or he was lying,” Katara finishes, “to pretend he wasn’t just another heartless warmonger.”

 _“You don’t know my uncle,”_ comes Zuko’s instant retort.

“We know how the Fire Nation’s been destroying things,” Aang says calmly, “and how they’ll say what they need to, to pretend it’s for a good cause.”

It’s funny- Zuko doesn’t have a comeback for that.

/

They land in an open spot in the center of Ba Sing Se, only to be greeted by a lady in spring green whose smile seems to be screwed into place. She feeds them the wildest welcome spiel Sokka’s ever heard, filled with circular logic and low-key creepy double-talk, and there might just be a nugget of truth to Zuko’s conspiracy theories.

Aang informs her that they need an immediate meeting with the Head Sage. He’s vague about why, but he does bring out his most dazzling grin and play the Avatar card a couple times, which seems to register behind her dazed, half-dead stare. Then she informs him that they’ll have to wait a minimum of three months.

Toph sticks her hands on her hips. “What part of _urgent Avatar business_ didn’t get through to you?”

Joo Dee’s smile doesn’t falter for an instant. “This will be a wonderful opportunity for you to enjoy the many delights of Ba Sing Se.”

“Okay,” Sokka interrupts, raising his voice in the hopes of getting through to her, “can we at least talk to your generals in the meantime? There’s gotta be a military effort here, we can help with planning the war-“

He gets through to her alright, but her eyes go wide with terror even as her smile stretches another half-inch.

“We do not talk about such things here,” she says, in a tone that sounds strangled and peppy at the same time. “You see, there is no war in Ba Sing Se.”

There’s a tap on Sokka’s hand. Discreetly, he opens his journal.

 _“_ _Told you so_ _.”_

/

It’s a short walk to the house they’ve been assigned in the Upper Ring. The city seems quiet and pleasant, and it’d be a fun walk if Zuko didn’t keep giving Sokka updates.

_“There are three men in dark green uniforms and giant hats, tailing you.”_

_“There’s another woman dressed like this one, just inside that house. Her name’s Joo Dee too, and her smile’s even creepier.”_

_“There’s a giant underground room under this street, and it has chains and cages.”_

Sokka’s eyes widen each time, and he starts scratching Zuko’s observations out immediately, just in case Joo Dee decides to snatch his notebook right out of his hands. She doesn’t, simply escorting them into the house.

“Might I ask what spiritual matter you wish to consult the Head Sage on?”

“Well, Sokka here’s got himself attached to a Fire Nation ghost,” Aang says promptly. “And not just any Fire Nation ghost, it’s-“

“Lee,” Sokka interrupts. “Lee. His name’s Lee. He’s, um, a soldier who I blew up on accident at the battle at the Northern Air Temple.”

(It’s plausible. He blew off half the cliffside with his natural gas stunt; it’d be nothing short of a miracle if there weren’t deaths.)

“...Yeah,” Aang says after a second, hesitantly. “Lee.”

Sokka rescues him by adding, “He’s a super-weak ghost. So far he hasn’t hurt us, or firebent or anything, but he definitely hates us. And would never help us. Because, you know, Fire Nation. So yeah, we really would love to exorcise him, before he manages to actually do some damage.” For dramatic effect, he flinches. “Ow! See, he just flicked my ear. Extremely annoying.”

He glares to his side, just to complete the act.

(Zuko did not flick his ear.)

“I...see,” Joo Dee says, still smiling. “I will submit your requests for meetings immediately.”

She leaves. 

“What was that about-“ Katara starts to demand, but Sokka lifts a finger to shush her.

A few seconds later, Zuko brushes his hand. _“There’s a man watching through the window from the next rooftop. If you sit down in the back of the room, you’re safe to talk.”_

“Let’s kick back and relax,” Sokka announces, clutching his notebook and striding to the couches in the back.

“Sokka-“

“Come on, Aang, just take a seat! Hang out with me! It’s been so long since we’ve caught up!”

Reluctantly, exchanging glances, the other three join him on the couches.

“Okay,” Katara says, “did _you_ get mind-controlled?”

“Nope,” he replies, now at a normal volume, “but we were being watched through the window.”

“I felt people following us the whole way here,” Toph adds.

“Zuko noticed three spies, plus a weird space under the street-“

Toph frowns. “I felt metal, it must have been for maintenance.”

“No, he looked. Those were chains and cages. _And_ he says there was another woman like this one, named Joo Dee, with the same general...” He gestures vaguely. “Weirdness.”

Aang looks between them both, bewildered, and then sighs. “Why did you lie to her about Zuko?”

Sokka snorts. “Zuko, is it fair to say you like this place even less than I do right now?”

_“It’s even creepier than Uncle said.”_

“Well,” he says, with a smile that grows almost to Joo Dee proportions, “if you want to investigate a top-secret spy force, I can’t imagine any ally better than an invisible ghost who floats through walls.”

/

They all decide to take a casual stroll through the city. Joo Dee clearly meant to lead them around, but Sokka seems to take charge of the route instead, propelling them in odd directions and jotting down notes.

“I’ve got an interest in architecture, you see,” he chirps at her, impishly mimicking her over-broad smile. “Oh, that’s such a nice windowsill, I have to sketch that!”

He genuinely _is_ making sketches every time they pause- stop laughing, Katara, that’s totally how that fence looks. But mostly he’s stalling for time, as Zuko zips through walls and floors and ceilings and reports his findings. There’s a spy here, there’s an old torture chamber there. You know, your usual tourist highlights.

_“The spies keep talking about a Lake Laogai.”_

Sokka frowns. Plays it cool for a little while. “Hey, Aang. You and Toph need to really start your earthbending practice, right? Is there a nice spot for that?”

Joo Dee smiles at him. “Of course! Ba Sing Se University offers several large halls for earthbending training. It would be an honor to host the Avatar.”

“And Katara needs to really whip him into shape on the waterbending, pun intended.” Sokka gestures at his sister.

“Hey,” Aang starts to protest, “my waterbending’s really solid-“

“Are you a master yet?” Sokka asks. “Didn’t think so. And they always like having a big body of water, for their training. You got anything like that here?”

Joo Dee’s eyes widen. “Perhaps one of the University swimming pools would serve your purpose.”

“Sure,” says Katara, right as Sokka says, “No way, we’ve gotta mimic natural ocean conditions here. Nothing but the best for the Avatar!”

He punctuates that with a slightly deranged grin.

“I…” Joo Dee blinks several times, like he’s jammed her gears. “I suppose you could practice by Lake Laogai, near the Outer Wall?”

“Wow!” Sokka whoops. “You’ve got a lake inside the city? Amazing! We’ve gotta check that out.”

At that second, an invisible string tugs at his wrist, and Sokka darts down a new alley. “Hey, look at that gutter!”

/

“There’s a giant prison system, like a maze below the entire city,” Sokka informs them all that night. His tentative alliance with Zuko’s turned out pretty darn useful.

“I could feel a lot of hollow spots,” Toph confirms, “and some people.”

“They drag prisoners down there- Zuko ran into three today, one who was accused of saying nice things about the Fire Nation, plus two arrested for mentioning the war.”

“Wait,” Aang interjects, “why would anyone _not_ say nice things about the Fire Nation if they didn’t know about the war? How can you make those things both illegal?”

Sokka shrugs. “The hat guys- the technical term’s ‘Dai Li,” by the way. For the guys. Not the hats. So the hat guys were carting all the prisoners off to Lake Laogai.”

“Ohhh,” says a chorus around the room.

“Yeah, that’s what was up with my Lake Laogai spiel! So we’re definitely going to check out a nice Earth Kingdom prison tomorrow-“

“Not tomorrow,“ Toph cuts in. “I’m betting this is going to turn into an all-out brawl with these Dai Li guys, and there’s no way I’m letting _that_ happen before Aang gets some real earthbender training under his belt.”

/

“Real earthbender training” turns out to mean “Toph yelling at Aang.” And Katara might be a little too sugary on the educational spectrum, but seriously, Toph’s taken things to the other extreme. As Katara paces and fumes on the sidelines about positive reinforcement, Sokka mutters to himself.

“Were your firebending teachers like this?”

 _“No,”_ Zuko writes. _“Toph’s much more easygoing.”_

Sokka snorts. “More sarcasm?”

_“No. But they had to be strict; I was a poor student. You’ve seen how my firebending’s flawed.”_

“...Actually, I was too distracted by the fact that you were trying to kill me. Tell me more?”

Katara chooses that moment to pace back towards him. “We have to do something. He _does_ need to work more on waterbending, but what if Toph scares him off lessons with me, too?”

_“I almost feel bad for him. It’s painful to fail at bending lessons on your birthday.”_

Katara’s looking over Sokka’s shoulder, and at the end of that sentence, she squeaks. “His _what?”_

She looks at Sokka, who shrugs at her and then looks back down.

_“It must be his birthday, right? This was the day Avatar Roku passed away, and according to my research the new Avatar is born the same hour the old one dies.”_

“You researched this? Of course you researched this.” Sokka takes a second to marvel at Zuko knowing Aang’s birthday when he and Katara didn’t. “Hey, Joo Dee! We need some tourist help.”

/

Joo Dee may be very bad at giving straight answers, but she’s excellent at giving bakery recommendations. She’s clearly torn between spying on the earthbending lesson and following Sokka and Katara out on their gastronomic exploration, but eventually she decides to stay behind. For their part, Sokka and Katara do actually head right to the addresses she recommends.

“We should get Aang a fruit tart,” Katara says.

“No,” Sokka corrects her, “we should get _all_ of us fruit tarts. You know, to really get into that birthday spirit! I didn’t get a birthday party either, ‘cause we were sick. You could say my only gift was...a frog in my throat!”

As Sokka chuckles at his own pun, Zuko prods his hand. _“Was that near Pouhai Stronghold, when the Yuyan Archers caught Aang smuggling frogs?”_

“Uh-huh. Frozen frog skin has medicinal qualities.”

_“My life makes a little bit more sense now. Thank you.”_

Sokka doesn’t read that aloud to Katara. He just keeps it for himself, pulling the journal back to his chest with a snort.

“Welcome to the Crispy Biscuit! How can we help you today?”

“Hi,” Katara says, “we’re trying to celebrate our friend’s birthday. Have you got any fruit tarts or pastries?”

The baker’s eyes light up. “Certainly! Perhaps your friend would like a sticky rice cake.”

She points to a smooth, shiny cake that looks almost like jelly. It’s topped with a delicate arrangement of rainbow-colored fruit. Sokka’s stomach rumbles.

“That looks amazing! Four of those, please-“ He stops short as Zuko prods his hand _hard_. “Actually, one second.”

He steps out of line, and Katara joins him, visibly puzzled. Her confusion melts away as Sokka pulls out his pen again.

 _“Aang was right when he told Professor Zei that fruit pies were one of the main products of the Southern Air Temple. Their baking was famous, and that is_ _not_ _what their classic fruit pies looked like.”_

“What would _you_ know about the Southern Air Temple?” huffs Katara.

_“I read all about it while searching for the Avatar. Some of the sources were unreliable, but I don’t see why a text on their dining habits wouldn’t be trustworthy.”_

Sokka purses his lips. “What do you mean, ‘unreliable’?”

There’s a pause.

_“The books by Fire Nation historians said that the Air Nomads had an army to defend all their temples. That was incorrect.”_

“You mean, that was a total lie,” Sokka says quietly, remembering the Southern Air Temple. Katara looks a little green herself.

There’s another pause.

_“Yes. I don’t know whether those historians invented the story or if they were lied to themselves, but yes.”_

Huh.

Sokka never expected a Fire Nation royal to actually _admit_ that.

“So what kind of dessert are we looking for here?” he blurts, trying to salvage the birthday mood.

“Aang might like an egg custard tart,” Katara suggests.

_“The Air Nomads ate egg custard tarts regularly, according to the book I read. But they preferred fruit tarts for special occasions.”_

Sokka points at a square tart, with layers of cream and jam and flaky gold pastry. “Maybe that one?”

_“No. They were big circular pies, with a base made from crumbled cookies, filled with a layer of sweet cheese, and topped with a swirl of light, frothy fruit-flavored cream. Common choices for the fruit were moon-peaches, straw-peaches, lemon-pears or purple sweet potatoes.”_

“Purple potatoes?” Sokka blurts quietly, aware of the man in a dark green uniform and a massive hat who’s just entered the shop. “For dessert?”

_“Uncle made the cook on our ship try the recipe out. I liked the purple cream better than anything else.”_

“So your taste in pies matches your taste in hair, huh?”

_“I’m doing my best to help you here!”_

“Hey, I’m just kidding.”

_“Oh.”_

“Okay,” Sokka says, “so we’ll probably need this custom-made, right?”

Katara nods.

He grins and plops down on a nearby stool. “I’ll draw up the blueprints.”

Five minutes later, Katara checks in. “Why are you drawing war balloons?”

He makes a high-pitched, indignant noise. “That’s not a war balloon! Look, there’s the crust, and here we’ve got a big round scoop of cheese, and that’s the swirl up top!”

_“The proportions are absurd. Also, the fruit swirl looks exactly like the Fire Nation seal, which I’d guess is not the goal of Aang’s birthday pie.”_

Sokka sniffs. “You think you can do better?”

He should’ve known better than to challenge Zuko.

It takes fifteen minutes, and several pages because Zuko keeps demanding a clean sheet as soon as one drop spills out of place, but at long last they have a sketch of a pie that looks surprisingly delicious.

Katara leans in close even though the Dai Li agent’s gone. “Lee’s a much better artist than you.”

“Hey!” Sokka retorts. “This was actually the world’s best teamwork.”

/

Sokka wonders if Zuko’s somehow tricked them. Maybe these pies are actually the national dessert of the Fire Nation. Maybe purple sweet potatoes are poisonous when mixed with cream. Still, Katara lays the desserts out in the main room of their house, and they wait until Toph barrels through the door, grumbling about airbenders and lousy stances. They catch her up and wait a few more minutes for Aang to trudge in.

“He’s coming,” Toph whispers.

 _“Joo Dee’s leaving him at the door,”_ adds Zuko.

When the door at last opens, everyone alive shouts, “Surprise!”

Aang’s eyes go wide, and then he sees the four pies, and his face glows with a brilliant grin.

“Come on, birthday boy,” Sokka says. “Katara won’t let me eat until you do.”

Aang rushes forth on an air scooter like walking simply isn’t fast enough, and he takes the plate Katara’s prepared with a slice of each pie, and a second later the plate’s empty and he’s beaming even wider.

“These are amazing,” he babbles with a purple-potato-cream mustache. “It’s not exactly the same recipe Monk Gyatso used, because we had to make the cream stickier so it wouldn’t fly away when we threw the pies at people, but some of the other monks made pies just like these! How did you know?”

Sokka inhales. “Zuko. Apparently the Fire Nation’s still got some old Air Nomad recipes.”

He can’t read the jumble of expressions flitting across Aang’s face right now.

“Oh.” He winds up smiling again, but his eyes sparkle too much for comfort. “Still, you gotta try it!”

Sokka cycles through the other three flavors and saves the potato for last.

“Ugh,” he grunts after his first spoonful. “This actually is the best.”

/

“How did you know it was my birthday?” Aang asks, after they’ve followed the birthday pies with a big vegetarian dinner.

“Zuko again,” Katara answers with an unreadable look on her face. “I don’t think you told us.”

“I sort of forgot, honestly.” He fidgets. “Sure, it’s my 113th birthday, but I figure I’m not _officially_ thirteen yet, because I lost time in the iceberg.”

Zuko grips Sokka’s hand. _“What iceberg?”_

Aang laughs, and it is funny. How could somebody know Aang’s birthday and the recipe for his favorite dessert but miss the _iceberg?_

Then he explains. “I kind of got frozen in an iceberg at the South Pole, before the comet came last time. Katara dug me out with her waterbending, and you found us right after that!”

Wait.

“Wait,” Sokka blurts. “I thought you knew about the iceberg, ‘cause you showed up right when those two-“ he jabs two fingers at Aang and Katara- “set off their little light show. But if you _didn’t_ know he was frozen, why were you at the South Pole?”

There’s another of those weird pauses.

_“It was a lucky guess.”_

Sokka reports that to a reception of unimpressed scoffs. “Seriously, you could just _tell_ us that you’re keeping your secrets. ‘Cause I hate to break it to you, but you’re not good at lying.”

 _“That isn’t fair,”_ comes Zuko’s response, with rushed characters that wind up unbalanced. _“When have I ever lied to you?”_

“Who finds the Avatar on a _lucky guess?”_ Sokka retorts.

_“I know it’s hard to believe that I was lucky with anything, but it’s true!”_

“So why were you around the South Pole in the first place? Vacationing? Scouting out your dad’s next colony?”

_“Don’t you people know anything?”_

Katara crosses her arms. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

_“I’ve told you, I was looking for the Avatar to regain my honor.”_

Sokka drops his face into his hands. It’s like talking to Joo Dee. The same circular logic, the same exhausting barrages of words that somehow don’t say anything new.

(Except Zuko’s right, isn’t he? He’s done plenty of lousy things, but he hasn’t specifically lied to them. Maybe he’s trying to be honest, and he’s just stunningly bad at it.)

“Why would you search the South Pole?” he ventures. “I mean, if I was looking for the Avatar, I’d totally go for the Air Temples first.”

 _“Obviously. I’d checked all of those twice already.”_ There’s a pause where he leaves the pen midair, before adding, _“I’m not stupid.”_

“But you didn’t have a sky bison,” Sokka says gradually.

_“Definitely not. I traveled on a tiny ship. You saw it.”_

Sokka screws up his forehead. Recalls the maps he’s seen, how even small spaces on paper correspond to miles and miles in the real world. Runs through a few calculations.

“How long were you looking?” Katara exclaims before he can with alarm in her eyes.

_“Three years.”_

When Sokka speaks, it’s in a low, disbelieving monotone. “You were checking air temples for three years.”

Zuko’s hand clenches around his. _“I looked a lot of other places too. I wasn’t being lazy or inefficient or”_

Sokka’s mouth falls open, and with a little effort he pulls the pen away. “Wait. No. I wasn’t accusing you of being- no.”

(He’s trying to understand, he is, but understanding Zuko feels like reading a scroll that’s been left out in the rain. Half the words have bled together. Half have disintegrated entirely.)

“If you didn’t know where Aang was, or that he was even _around at all,_ then why would you be looking for him?”

_“Because the Avatar had to be alive somewhere.”_

“That’s not true,” Aang counters. “If I’d died in the Avatar State? The reincarnation cycle would’ve broken, and the Avatar would be gone forever!”

The whole room goes silent. At last, Toph speaks.

“I know we’re all buddy-buddy with the pie and the marriage, but that’s probably not something to share with the _prince of the Fire Nation.”_

The room goes silent again, until there’s the scritch-scratch of Zuko’s response.

_“If it helps, I can’t tell exactly anyone.”_

“I’m just saying,” Aang says, slightly contrite, “your search might’ve gone nowhere.”

_“It was supposed to go nowhere. I wasn’t exactly meant to find you.”_

“So you spent three years looking for someone who hadn’t been around for a hundred years, and then you found him by luck, even though you weren’t supposed to find him.” Sokka rattles off the words. “Did I get it?”

_“Exactly.”_

Everyone alive looks around in utter bafflement.

_“Do you really not know?”_

Aang exhales slowly. “Why don't you tell us?”

_“There isn’t much to tell.”_

Sokka nearly interrupts to say how very much he doubts that, but he holds his tongue. When Zuko writes again, his brushstrokes are jerky and rigid, with pauses even mid-character. More than once, he blots out a letter half-written. The further he gets, the harder his hand squeezes Sokka’s.

(Funny, there’s something squeezing Sokka’s heart too.)

 _“I engaged in an Agni Kai with_ ~~_Fath_ ~~ _the Fire Lord.”_

“You dueled your dad.” Sokka’s eyes dart back and forth as he tries to make sense of that sentence. “Does everyone do that? A...coming-of-age thing, like ice dodging in the Water Tribe?”

_“No, it was just me. It was his attempt to teach me respect. I’d spoken out of turn at an important meeting.”_

Sokka can believe that.

_“He banished me for my performance during the duel. I couldn’t return to the Fire Nation unless I was bringing back the Avatar.”_

Sokka’s eyes bug out. As soon as he finishes reading that aloud he swaps to his own questions. “Whoa, did you totally humiliate him? Inflict a secret but debilitating injury?”

 _“Of course not. If I’d fought that well, I wouldn’t have lost my honor.”_ He lifts his pen and then adds one more sentence, like an afterthought: _“He would have also killed me right then, but I guess that wouldn’t have made much of a difference to the arc of my life.”_

“Then what’d you do?” Toph demands, and an undercurrent of fear peeks through her frustration. On the one hand, Sokka’s glad to know he’s not alone in his little freakout. On the other hand, if Toph’s afraid? That’s a sure sign of the apocalypse right there.

_“I refused to fight, showing unforgivable cowardice and allowing my face to be burned.”_

Sokka’s voice starts to weaken around “cowardice.” By the end, it’s barely above a mumble.

(He ought to cry. In some distant way, he knows that, but it’s so on-the-nose and absurd- the Fire Lord burning his own son the way his armies burn the world, carelessly and easily and “for their own good”- that for one monstrous second, he’s tempted to laugh.)

(Maybe he shouldn’t be able to take this in stride, but what else is he supposed to _do?)_

Toph’s sheet-white in horror. Aang’s tearing up again, and Katara’s balled up her fists, radiating anger. They look painfully young, all of them. Sokka feels centuries older, and tired to the bone. He’s known what Fire Lords are capable of. Terribly, he’s not shocked by Zuko’s story at all. 

(There’s a sort of twisted fairness to it. The Fire Nation’s as cruel to its own children as the world’s.)

Aang sniffles, and wipes his nose, and says, “I’m sorry.” 

Sokka means to ask, _For what?_ A second later, Zuko writes exactly that.

“I’m sorry that happened to you at all. I don’t know if I could’ve changed that somehow, we’ll never know, but that shouldn’t have happened. And...I’m sorry we didn’t try harder to help you. I should have saved you, at the North Pole.”

“I should’ve known you’d be in trouble, when I dropped that much ice,” Katara adds. “Leaving you was...it’s what Jet would’ve done, it wasn’t right.”

Sokka’s pretty sure Jet would’ve done more to make sure Zuko died. Jet would’ve blown up the whole glacier if he’d had enough blasting jelly on hand. Sokka does not state this out loud.

“And I’m _sorry,”_ Katara says, roughly rubbing away her own tears. “The things you did to us were wrong and, and...frightening. But Aang was right, you’re just a teenager, and maybe you could’ve grown to be on the right side if we’d let you _live._ Now we’ll never get to find out.”

She and Aang look to Sokka, expectantly.

“I’m sorry the Fire Lord did that to you,” he offers. “And you shouldn’t have had to be at the North Pole in the first place. You should’ve been in some fancy palace getting manicures, where kid princes belong.”

(There’d always been a note of desperation in Zuko’s voice, when he was alive. Sokka’s not sure how he missed it.)

(There’s a note of desperation in Sokka’s voice now.)

He falls silent, keenly aware of Aang’s disappointment, and Katara’s. It’d be easier to join them in their shows of remorse, but it’s odd- he’s got too much respect for Zuko to utter an apology he doesn’t whole-heartedly mean.

Aang’s about to say something- probably a protest that Sokka’s fallen short of his Avatar principles. but Zuko takes up Sokka’s hand again, cutting him off.

 _“I cannot accept your_ ~~_apol_ ~~ _gracious apologies. You were all within your rights, by the rules of war, to leave me in the ice. Given how badly I had provoked you before that, you would have been justified in doing far worse. The blame would have still lain with me as a combatant, for exhibiting vulnerability in the first place. In fact, while I was previously unreasonably upset by the events at the North Pole and expressed myself ungraciously, I should actually thank you for refraining from dealing further injuries, as you would have been protected by law and Fire Nation custom in exacting additional vengeance-“_

“Okay,” Sokka cuts in, “that’s a little far. ‘Not maiming people before you dump them in ice’ is the bare minimum here.”

_“Exactly, and I am grateful that you did not exceed that bare minimum when determining my penalty...”_

/

So Aang’s 113th birthday is maybe not his most pleasant. 

See, they’d gotten locked in quite the vicious cycle. First, Katara would fume against the injustice of it all, while Aang simultaneously wept about it. Then, Zuko would attempt to comfort them by whipping out a court’s worth of stilted language; he’d formally thank them for not murdering him on purpose. That, or he’d tried to reassure them that, no, their conduct was thoroughly justified and merciful by Fire Nation standards. Eventually, he’d apologized for causing them pain by being so weak as to let the hypothermia kill him.

Every time, Aang and Katara mourned even harder, and every time, Zuko upped the formality and effusiveness of his declarations, until Sokka stood up and declared he needed beauty sleep.

“Happy birthday, Aang,” he said. “How about we forget this whole thing and re-celebrate when you’ve actually lived thirteen years? Should be in a couple months.”

Aang gave a gloomy nod. “Thanks, Sokka.”

So now, Sokka’s curled up alone in bed with his notebook and pen within reach.

_“There’s a Dai Li agent on the neighbor’s roof. But right now I think he’s spying on the people two doors down, not us.”_

Us.

Huh.

“Thanks, Zuko,” he murmurs.

_“Sorry for this evening. I never know what to say.”_

Sokka winces. “Look, we’re all going to botch this. Not like any of us have practice talking to ghosts. Or being a ghost.”

Hearing himself, he winces harder.

_“They honestly shouldn’t waste tears on me. I don’t want their pity.”_

Sinking his head into his pen-free hand, Sokka lets out a sigh. “If it helps, I think there’s a lot of guilt in there. Not just pity.”

_“But I told them it’s okay.”_

“Aang’s twelve, or thirteen, depending on how you count. Katara’s fourteen, and they’re the two nicest people I know. They’re not exactly used to the idea of causing people’s deaths. Even indirectly.”

There’s a long pause. Still, Sokka stays propped up on one elbow, ready to write. Zuko has more to say.

_“But you were right about the Northern Air Temple. I read the reports. There were heavy casualties.”_

Sokka closes his eyes. Sighs harder.

 _“And I wasn’t exactly_ ~~_useful_ ~~ _functional, as a ghost, those first few weeks, but from what I could tell the Fire Nation losses at the North Pole were catastrophic. My death objectively shouldn’t matter. There must have been hundreds or thousands of sailors who died too, when Aang was in the Avatar State.”_

After a moment, Sokka nods and whispers something he hasn’t been able to say, not to Katara or the twelve-year-olds he travels with. They’re kids. They’re either unaware of what happens when you throw an armored sailor into ice water or bash a soldier into a rock, or they’re joyfully, willfully oblivious.

Sokka hasn’t been a kid in a long time.

“I know.”

/

Sokka’s brain doesn’t shut off fully, even when he sleeps. A calculation rips him out of a dream. An equation with a missing variable.

“Zuko,” he calls into the darkness, “how old are you?”

Moonlight shines on the answer: _“I would’ve turned seventeen this summer.”_

“So you were thirteen.”

He doesn’t say when. He doesn’t have to.

“Like Aang.”

Zuko’s hand feels so heavy on his when he writes, _“Yes.”_

“I’ll be honest,” Sokka says in his half-awake liminal state, “I don’t know what to do with that.”

Zuko’s response comes a minute, maybe an eternity later: _“Neither did I.”_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm temporarily pausing updates on this fic, because I'm about to post a different multichapter fic for Zukka Big Bang. It's a Summer Olympics AU, starring Sokka (the best spectator at the Olympic Games) and Zuko (gold medalist in sadness and self-loathing). It should be lots of fun <3


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The Zukka Olympics AU is now all done, so this fic’s back. Thanks for waiting <3

“That was so close, Aang!” Katara cheers, floating on a slab of ice atop Lake Laogai. “Now you just have to put a little more wrist into it, so your ice daggers actually _pierce_ instead of just falling apart when they hit something.”

Sokka glances up at Katara, who’s laying on the positive reinforcement extra thick to compensate for Toph’s mistreatment. Then he glances at Joo Dee, who’s still smiling, even though Katara and Aang have accidentally-on-purpose splashed her three separate times. Finally, he glances down at his notebook, where his hand’s just finished writing.

_“These are definitely the Dai Li headquarters. There are hundreds of agents with the hats, and I found a room with twenty Joo Dees, all practicing how to avoid answering questions. They’ve also been talking about something called a ‘schoolroom,’ but I can’t get far enough out to see it. I think you would need to go down to the bottom of the lake yourself.”_

Sokka scrunches up his forehead. “You know, that can be arranged.”

He whispers to Toph, who promptly runs to Katara and insists that Aang clearly needs to learn how to earthbend underwater, so he can blend his bending styles. Once she gives Katara an exaggerated punch of affection, she catches on and agrees it’s a brilliant idea.

“And,” Toph says with an impish smile, “we’ll have to bring Sokka in with us, to up the stakes.”

“I- what? You are _not_ getting me into an underwater death trap. I’m staying up here, safe and out of the way where non-benders belong!”

After a massive display of reluctance, Sokka winds up right where he wanted- in an air pocket that Aang and Katara use to navigate down to the bottom of the lake. Sokka directs them, following the tug of the invisible string that links him to Zuko. When he at last receives a tap on the hand, they return to the shore.

“That,” Toph rants, “was the sloppiest earthbending of any Avatar ever. I bet Kyoshi would be ashamed of you! How are you going to move mountains if you can’t move _wet sand?”_

Aang does his best to look ashamed, but Sokka can tell he’s buzzing with excitement. Sokka’s excited too, once he makes it to dry land and opens up his notebook, chattering about how he’s got to sketch that giant tuna-bass that passed their little bubble.

_“There are at least fifty dark cells, with lights that keep going around in circles. The Dai Li chain their prisoners in front of the lights and then start chanting at them, repeating things like how ‘there's no war in Ba Sing Se.’ It really looked like brainwashing.”_

“Wow,” Toph mutters after Sokka whispers this aloud, “that’s a really big tuna-bass.”

“What else did they say?” he asks.

_“They use a lot of code, I didn’t catch most of it. But most of agents kept saying, ‘The Earth King invites you to Lake Laogai.’”_

Sokka squints. “That’s not creepy at all.”

_“In the last cell the guy who was tied up looked like he was Dai Li too, and the message was something different. ‘The princess summons you to the seashore.’”_

“I know about King Kuei,” Toph says, “but who’s the princess?”

 _“Kuei has a cousin who’s a princess, and she’s fourth in the line of succession.”_ Zuko answers automatically, like someone who’s had to memorize this. _“I never heard she was particularly important, but maybe the Dai Li are fans of hers.”_

Sokka shakes his head. “This place just gets more and more complicated.”

/

Ba Sing Se’s weirdness hits a new peak when Katara picks up the day’s newspaper and announces, “Tomorrow, the Earth King’s having a ball to welcome his new pet badgermole!”

“What?” Toph snaps. “Badgermoles should be _king_ here, they’re not pets!”

As Katara offers her sympathies, Sokka takes a closer look at the paper. “Huh, it’s at the palace. I bet there’s military intelligence there. Might be our only chance at a straight answer.”

 _“Are you planning to steal military intelligence from_ _your own side? _ _”_

“You gonna help us?”

“We’re not invited,” Katara points out. “Though I suppose we could sneak in with the other guests…”

Toph cackles. “Please. Anyone in society would spot you all from a mile away.”

“I’m going to master all the elements,” Aang protests. “I can totally figure out fancy manners.” 

He sweeps a curtain off a window and wraps it around him like a cloak. “Mr. Sokka of the Water Tribe. Ms. Katara of the Water Tribe.”

“Oh, Avatar Aang!” Sokka wraps the other end of the curtain around himself and dons his most pretentious accent. “How you _do_ go on.”

Aang bows. Sokka bows. Aang bows. They fling themselves back and forth until Zuko grabs Sokka by the shoulders, pokes him in the back so he stands up straight, folds his hands into fists, and brings them together. At last, he presses Sokka down slowly, steadily, and then slowly pulls him back up again, in a proper bow.

“Huh,” Toph says. “Maybe you don’t have to know etiquette yourself, if you’re attached to a literal prince.”

/

Sokka can’t believe Zuko’s giving him lessons on politeness. _Zuko._

_“Imagine you’re wearing armor around your torso, when you’re just standing. You have to project a look of strength with the core of your frame, even if you’re miserable or exhausted.”_

Zuko used to walk around with armor on all the time, yet there had been an awkward rigidity to his movements that seemed to come from underneath. Sokka wonders whether he was miserable or exhausted, every time they’d met.

He tries to follow Zuko’s dictates, and he takes a turn around the room, imagining a suit of metal binding him in place.

_“Closer, but you also can’t let people see how hard you’re trying. Try for more elegance. Imagine you’re holding something delicate, like a fan or a baby turtleduck.”_

“So,” Sokka huffs, poking at the ache that’s developing in his back, “let me see if I have this right. You have to try your hardest, but you can’t let anyone see, and you have to be the scariest and the prettiest at the same time?”

_“Exactly.”_

“This is the worst!”

_“This is how you survive in a palace.”_

Still, he walks about the room again. Zuko offers silent corrections, tipping Sokka’s chin up, melting away the tension in his wrists with a gentle touch. It’s slow, tortuous work, but over time Sokka can feel an air of grace settling into him. Maybe, just maybe, he could pass for nobility.

/

_“Forget the coat, Sokka should absolutely have the cape.”_

In the dressing room of a terrifyingly fancy tailor’s shop, Katara glowers at thin air. “You just want him to trip over his own feet, don’t you?”

“Nah,” Sokka says with a smirk, “he probably just wishes _he_ had a cape.”

_“...Not the point. The cape really takes advantage of your shoulders. The silhouette’s more dramatic.”_

His shoulders? Sokka’s always been a fan of his shoulders- he twists around a little to appreciate them in the full-length mirror- but he didn’t know Zuko had noticed them too. 

“This is a stealth mission,” she hisses. “We’re trying to be as undramatic as possible.”

_“You’re going to a palace ball. The more dramatic you are, the less you’ll stand out.”_

“Be serious.” Katara puts her hands on her hips with a thoroughly dramatic eyeroll. “We’ll just put him in a nice green robe and shave off the front of his head like everyone here-“

Sokka’s about to protest, but Zuko grabs his hand first with shocking vehemence. _“That’s a total waste; you can’t possibly make a decent queue with such short hair or even with a wig. Just get me a metal band; I can figure out a passable top-knot-“_

“But half-shaved queues are the main style in the Upper Ring-“

_“I will fight you if you try to cut off Sokka’s hair.”_

“How in the world would you fight me?” Katara demands, right as Sokka says, “Are you trying to defend the honor of my hair?”

/

In another shocking turn of events, Zuko’s hair advice turns out to be _good._ He picks out a lovely golden band and a bottle of perfumed hair oil- Katara pretends to choke, but Sokka and Zuko agree the scent is the height of refinement- and then proceeds to style his hair. It’s tough work, because Zuko can manipulate his hair but not the metal band that’s supposed to hold it. Still, Sokka figures out how to hold the metal in place as Zuko curls his hair through without pulling even a little, and their hands keep bumping into each other in fleeting instants of contact. A half-hour later, Zuko brushes down the strands of hair that don’t go in the top-knot, completing the look by covering the shaved sides of his head. Then he gives his last bits of advice as Sokka dons the rest of his costume- tragically cape-free, though he’s still got an embroidered forest-green cloak with pockets for his handy pen and notebook.

_“If all else fails, never go down without a fight.”_

“Thanks, Zuko. Way to calm my nerves.”

/

Toph and Sokka don’t go in with the party crowd, exactly. Instead, they hang out at the back of the entrance line, looking haughtily down their noses at the other guests, while Zuko scouts the edges of the palace.

_“There’s a supply closet right next to the outer wall. Toph should be able to bend right in.”_

“Miss Beifong,” Sokka says, offering Toph his arm, “I hear the gardens are lovely this time of year. Would you care to smell the flowers with me?”

“They can’t smell worse than your hair gel,” she replies merrily.

Five minutes later, they’ve gotten themselves into a broom closet.

A dark broom closet.

Locked from the outside.

“It’ll be too loud if I bend through a wall,” Toph warns. “We’re inside the palace now, people will hear.”

“Hey, can I have one of your hairpins? I can break through the lock.”

Toph immediately jabs him with a pin. “You can _pick locks?”_

“...Not well. But Zuko helps!”

Zuko’s hand closes around his and starts jiggling the pin around, pausing each time a tumbler clicks into place before wiggling some more. A couple minutes after that, he abruptly breaks through and twists the handle, and Sokka tumbles out of the closet. Zuko barely catches him by the shoulders before he slams face-first into the floor. Gracefully, Toph steps out behind him with her nose in the air and strolls by him, her dignity perfectly intact. A second late, Sokka scrambles up, closes the door behind him, and joins her.

They saunter past several other guests who don’t even glance their way. Sokka waits for a tug on his wrist or a tap on the hand, but there’s nothing.

“It just feels like a normal party down here,” Toph mutters. “Everything’s crowded.” She adjusts her stance and frowns. “Everything except for one big empty room at the end of that hall.”

They head in that direction. Sokka feels a string pull his wrist forward.

“Zuko says we should check it out.”

Amazingly, it takes him a solid thirty seconds to consider that it might be a trap.

There’s a set of fancy green doors, and Sokka considers them for a moment before taking the handles and pushing. They refuse to budge, even after he throws his full weight into it, grunting and groaning-

Zuko grabs his hand and pulls. Both doors open easily.

“Oh.”

Toph giggles.

They walk into the creepiest library Sokka can imagine. There are perfectly normal bookcases, and there’s some lovely plush carpeting, and there’s nowhere near enough lighting. Most of the light comes from an unnaturally hot, bright green fire. Sokka inspects it from afar and finds it’s filled with those same glowy green crystals from the labyrinth.

“There wouldn’t just be military secrets lying around here, right?” Sokka says, rifling through some papers lying out on a desk. They’re all notes on a badgermole’s ideal feeding schedule.

“Maybe not lying around, but I can feel a big metal box right behind that bookcase.”

 _“The lock is complicated,”_ Zuko writes. _“I don’t know how to break it.”_

Well, that’s convenient. Sokka’s about to air his suspicions about how a Fire Nation prince would be uniquely eager to keep them away from Earth Kingdom military intelligence when Zuko adds, _“There’s only one paper in there, about the eclipse.”_

Sokka’s eyebrows shoot up. “The eclipse?”

_“Yes, it’s a spy report citing Fire Nation sources about the Day of Black Sun. But they have the date wrong.”_

“They do, huh? How so?”

_“They said it’s on the afternoon of July 25th, which is obviously a day late.”_

“So there’s a solar eclipse on the afternoon of the 24th?” 

Sokka holds his breath and waits for Zuko to set him alight with that vivid green fire. Instead, there’s just a soft, almost resigned hand on his, like the physical manifestation of a sigh.

_“You didn’t know?”_

“In fact I did not.”

_“Hide.”_

Sokka stammers incoherently for a second, but Toph yanks him by the hand and shoves him down behind a well-cushioned armchair as the door opens again.

“I apologize for interrupting you during a public event, sir,” a man says. “But several of the schoolrooms at Lake Laogai have been unexpectedly shut down for maintenance.”

“Again?” says another man, with a deep, rumbling voice. “How many?”

“Eight. Twice as many as last time. We can’t tie the Avatar to it yet. They visited the lake for what seemed like just a routine waterbending lesson.”

“I want double the guards on their entire group. Where is the Avatar now?”

“In his assigned building. He appears to have ordered in a romantic dinner for himself and his waterbending master.”

Sokka does not gag, but it’s a close call.

“Where are the other two?”

“They left the house in formalwear, it seems for a romantic outing of their own.”

This time Toph pretends to throw up.

“But where are they exactly?” demands the man with the scary voice.

“...We will begin the search immediately.”

“Alert me when they’re found. I want a full account of their movements.”

/

So Toph and Sokka skedaddle after that.

“What exactly are they accusing us of?” Toph hisses at Sokka. “We just got here, we haven’t had time to do _anything_ yet.”

“They’re accusing us of dating, apparently,” Sokka says as Zuko helps him pick the broom closet lock again.

“Please. I’d never break up your loving marriage.”

Sokka audibly gags now, even as the door pops open. “Seriously though, we should fake that night out. If they’re accusing us of stuff we didn’t do, I don’t want them guessing stuff we _did.”_

“Gonna take me to dinner, Snoozles?”

“Are there restaurants where people wear stuff like this?”

“...Yeah, but we’d need reservations a year in advance.”

They flee the vicinity of the palace. Once they do, they pause for breath, and Zuko pokes Sokka. 

_“Pretend you’ve just finished dinner and now you’re going to the theater district for a show. It’s crowded, and it’s not too strange to dress up.”_

“Theater?” she whines. “Gotta say, I’m not a big fan of the scenery.”

_“I saw an ad for Love Amongst the Dragons. That’s always very heavy on the speeches; they’ll narrate everything they’re doing out loud.”_

“I’m still going to hate this,” Toph declares.

/

Amazingly, Toph does not hate it.

Zuko and Sokka, on the other hand...

They make it a solid two minutes before Zuko starts poking, forcing Sokka to pull his notebook out of his cloak; the rustling wins glares from all directions. Once he's got it out, Sokka's eyes dart down over and over, taking in Zuko’s verbose critique. For his part, Zuko manages to keep up a steady stream of complaints through all three hours. It’s pretty entertaining reading his invective, when for once it’s directed at an outside target.

_“I get that they’re trying for a fiery feel because the play’s by a Fire Nation playwright, but it’s not a Fire Spirit who binds the Dragon Emperor. It’s the Dark Water Spirit, or the Night Frost Spirit in the oldest versions. Also the costume should be a million times more elegant than that, and where’s his mask?”_

_“They’re adding extra lines to the Dragon Empress’s monologue. Who do these people think they are? They didn’t even get the meter right.”_

_“Please, the Spirit- who ought to be watery, not fiery- isn’t malicious like that. They’re supposed to just be a manifestation of fate, binding the Emperor and Empress in mortal form together so they can properly fall in love like destiny dictates. But making the Spirit into a full-blown villain? Even the Ember Island Players wouldn’t dare commit this sort of character assassination.”_

“Literally,” Sokka mutters, as the Fire Spirit throws lightning at the Dragon Empress and she promptly falls over, dead.

_“They did not just do that.”_

The Dragon Emperor launches into a lengthy eulogy. “I’ll never forget you,” “there will never be a love like ours,” all those cliches. Sokka stifles a yawn.

_“That’s not the right ending. They’re supposed to end up immortal and happy together.”_

The Dragon Empress explodes in a blinding ball of white light. The Dragon Emperor looks at it, stunned, and then turns immortal.

_“How come he gets to live and she doesn’t? How is he supposed to survive an eternity without her? This is supposed to be one of the happiest romances in Fire Nation literature???”_

The second he and Toph make it out of the theater, Sokka launches into his own critique. “Look, I get that artistic license exists, but I have never seen such unrealistic physics in my life. Why would someone explode five minutes _after_ getting hit with lightning? And how did the Fire Spirit make that volcano explode? I buy that as an earthbending skill, but as firebending? Please! They were clearly just showing off their special-effects budget-“

Sokka keeps up his rant all the way back to their building. 

“And anyway, I’m pretty sure spirit communication doesn’t work like that or Yue would’ve _totally-“_

“Snoozles. The Dai Li can’t hear you anymore, you can drop the act.”

He stops, baffled. “What?”

“You don’t have to keep proving we really saw the show.”

“I...That wasn’t for the Dai Li, I’m really mad that they butchered that premise!”

“It’s just a play, get over it.” She rolls her eyes. “Hey, lovebirds.”

Katara and Aang start stammering and blushing intensely, sitting in the remnants of what really does look like a romantic dinner. Toph plops right down, helps herself to a chocolate-covered straw-grape, and begins recounting their night.

“So yeah, we got useful military intelligence,” she finishes, “but only because Zuko has a big mouth.”

_“It’s not useful.”_

Sokka shoots his notebook a skeptical look. “I hate to break it to you, buddy, but that’s the biggest scoop we’ve ever gotten, short of the actual comet.”

_“The eclipse is less than ten minutes long. You can’t do serious damage to any garrison or ship in that time.”_

“Maybe not,” Katara says, folding her arms, “but we could break into the palace and take out the Fire Lord.”

_“You can’t.”_

“Are you really still defending him?” Sudden rage rises in Sokka’s throat, as much for Zuko as himself. “He burned your _face_ off.”

_“I mean you literally will not be able to land a hit on him. Do you think he’s stupid? He’ll be in a hidden bunker somewhere, I don’t know which one, and he’ll have non-benders and colonial earthbenders among his guards, plus decoys. My mother told me they keep poison too, in the safehouses. All the royals and the guards will have taken the antidote, but if you get close? They’ll spring deadly toxins all over you.”_

“If it’s in the air, maybe I can bend it away in time,” Aang says.

 _“You want to take that risk? There are probably other precautions they never told me about. If you get anywhere near Father during the eclipse, you_ _will not_ _survive.”_

“See, if I’d just spilled a major military secret,” Sokka points out with a wince, “that’s exactly the lie I’d tell.”

 _“If you don’t trust me, get a second opinion,”_ Zuko responds after a moment. _“But I’m telling you- if you go for any remotely major maneuver during the Day of Black Sun? You will fail.”_

/

Sokka tosses and turns that night, pondering Zuko’s warning. It could be a lie. It feels like the truth. Zuko seems to be honest to a fault, so questioning him now feels unexpectedly mean.

“Hey,” he whispers.

A second later, he feels a languid touch- the back of Zuko’s hand grazing the back of his.

“I can’t believe they had the audacity to play _happy music_ at the finale.”

A moment later, his hand’s clasped between two others, as Zuko squeezes it firmly in solidarity.

/

“Twinkletoes, you need to quit running away from your problems! If you can’t stop one measly little rock, how are you ever going to stop the Fire Lord, huh?”

Head hanging low, Aang drops into his horse stance for the fourth time.

“And if I catch you trying to stop my rock with _airbending_ again, I’m going to drop it on your head!”

“...Got it,” he sighs.

The next time, he doesn’t jump out of the rock’s way, but he doesn’t block it either. Instead he falls over with a worrying _thump._ Gasping, Katara runs forth, healing water at the ready.

“Toph, stop scaring him! Aang, you’re making so much progress, and I bet you’d make so much more if your earthbending teacher would _stop fracturing your limbs…”_

Sokka tunes out Katara’s rant, the same way Toph probably does. But Toph’s words keep ringing in his head, even when he falls into bed that night.

“Look,” he mutters to the darkness. “You can tell me to get lost if you want, but I need to ask you something.”

Zuko tells him nothing. He dares go further.

“What’s it like, facing Ozai?”

Zuko touches his hand immediately. Yet even after Sokka moves towards the faint light of the window and brings the pen to paper, the words don’t come quickly.

_“I was naive and sheltered, and I underestimated how far he would go to make a point. You and Aang won’t make that mistake.”_

“...anything you can tell us about his tactics? His fighting style?”

He tries to imagine the Fire Nation interrogating him about his own father, or about Katara’s tactics. He wouldn’t blame Zuko for reacting with violence, even after everything.

_“He’s the best lightning-bender in history.”_

Sokka’s breath catches. “What?”

_“Did you see Azula bend lightning?”_

“I was half-asleep and running away, but yes.”

_“So imagine that at triple-speed. Also, Father can fly short distances with fire jets. Besides that, his technique’s perfect but standard.”_

“Yeah,” Sokka says wanly. “Besides that.”

He doesn’t know what a lightning scar would look like.

“Is that what he did to you?” Sokka’s mouth asks before his brain catches up. “The lightning?”

_“You have to be a threat to deserve lightning.”_

“Um.” 

_“No,”_ Zuko clarifies. _“He just walked up and lit a flame in one hand. It was very basic, as firebending goes.”_

Sokka can see it. He can see any of the firebenders he’s met easily kindling a flame in their palm. There’s no force behind it, no forward motion, so Zuko must have been still when he burned.

He was kept still, or he simply stayed that way. Sokka’s not sure which is worse.

 _“He wasn’t even supposed to be my opponent,”_ Zuko says in a sudden flood of ink. _“I’d talked back to a general in a war meeting, because there’d be unnecessary casualties with his plan. I thought I would have to fight the general, who hadn’t seen combat in decades. Though I could have won against him, Father used the old law of substitution to step in on his behalf, and I kept hoping someone would step in for me too.”_

“...Oh.”

_“Like I said, I was naive.”_

Sokka wonders who would be insane enough to willingly step into battle against Fire Lord Ozai. Maybe Zuko’s uncle, who’d trailed him like a quiet, weary shadow. Maybe Azula, in a very different world.

And now they’re sending Aang right into the scorpi-lion’s den.

“He’s going to eat Aang alive, isn’t he?” Sokka asks, voice catching on sudden hoarseness.

Zuko doesn’t answer.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading. If you enjoyed it, please leave a kudos and/or a comment <3


End file.
